If There’s One Thing I Hate More Than Dumb Excuses To Support a Racist Team Name, It’s Dumb Excuses To Support a Racist Team Name That Use Bad Math.

SL Huang (aka MathPencil) — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 17:00:15 +0000

By Assaf Yekuel (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I just watched the segment on The Daily Show that interviewed Native American activists and R*dskins fans about the Washington D.C. football team’s name. One of the peripheral points brought up was that a whole mess of people claim to have Native American heritage who don’t — often a great-great-great(etc.) Cherokee ancestor. (Why is it always Cherokee? I have no idea.)

Anyway, one of the R*dskins fans claimed she was 1/12 Cherokee, and said, “As [someone who is] 1/12 Cherokee, I am not offended [by the name].”

WHAT

YOU CANNOT BE 1/12 ANYTHING

THE MATH IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE

YOUR HERITAGE HAS TO BE IN INCREMENTS OF INVERSE POWERS OF TWO SERIOUSLY YOU JUST SAID SOMETHING THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE

I mean, supporting a racist team name is bad enough. You really have to compound that with BAD FAKE MATH?!

(Seriously, you have two parents, so you’re 1/2 of what each of them are. They each have two parents, so you’re 1/4 each whatever your grandparents are. You’re 1/8 what your great-grandparents are, and 1/16 what your great-great grandparents are. NOTICE WHAT NUMBER ISN’T IN ANY DENOMINATOR? THAT’S RIGHT, 12. If you’re going to invent imaginary Cherokee heritage, at least invent something possible. GAH!)

mathematics – Bad Menagerie

If There’s One Thing I Hate More Than Dumb Excuses To Support a Racist Team Name, It’s Dumb Excuses To Support a Racist Team Name That Use Bad Math.