Is This Offensive? (Updated)(Update II)

Update II: The Silverbacks are still the Silverbacks, but they have a new logo. Smart move. Keep the community happy and avoid controversy. The team initially took a defiant tact but wised up. Why? $$$$ Time to sell tickets! The new logo:

[The Old Logo] Buffalo's new minor league basketball team, the Silverbacks.

UPDATE I: I asked whether the above logo and name were offensive because of the history of comparing African Americans to gorillas, monkeys, and other primates, and relatedly, the general de-humanization of Black people thoughout history. I think the logo is offensive, but mostly just reflects poor taste and questionable marketing. Coincidentally there was an article in Sunday's NY Times about an ill-fated exihibit put on by the Bronx Zoo in 1906. The exhibit featured a Congolese pygmy named Ota Benga, a survivor of the Congan holocaust (see below), who was purchased from captors, brought to the US and ultimately "displayed" alongside various primates. That was 100 years ago but clearly the slur has not been completely erased from public consciousness. So I ask again: should a majority African American sports team bear a logo and name that ignores history and perpetuates degrading sterotypes?

Regarding the Congan Holocaust, here's a summary I wrote a few years ago of an excellent biography of King Leopold of Belgium - the man behind the world's least known genocide:

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild: 10 Million Cheers for Colonialism? Less than 50 years after agents of King Leopold had murdered, raped, tortured, mutilated, and brutalized half of the population of the Congo, Congolese schoolchildren were taught from Belgium drafted textbooks that Leopold was the benevolent father figure of their country.

Hochschild has written a history that reads with the ease of a newspaper about a subject that has been buried in the annals of mis-history. 10 million Africans were killed for the enrichment of one man and his partners and yet most people have never heard of this story! That this genocide is virtually unknown to most people is a sad reminder of how much injustice has been perpetuated upon Africans over the centuries that has been "forgotten."

Among the more fascinating aspects of this book are the profiles of the leaders of the human rights movement, white and black, who at the turn of the century showed incredible courage and integrity in fighting against political and journalistic malfeasance, bribery, and significant risks to their own lives, in order to expose to the world the magnitude of the Belgium atrocities committed in the Congo.

Dinesh D'Souza, to whom my "cheers" sentence refers, is among those who seek to deny or downplay the crimes committed by or for colonialists. Hopefully this book will cast too bright a light for such distortions of the truth to prevail. An enlightening book that I highly recommend.