It’s not easy to stay in the forefront of social progress, but California legislators are giving it a shot. They’re pushing a bill to ban one of the great remaining evils that stalks our land: politically incorrect sports teams.

You read that right; under legislation sponsored by Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (moving briskly through the legislature with little opposition), state agencies could ban any public school team name, mascot or nickname they hold to be derogatory. That especially means Indians, or any derivative names like Blackhawks, Braves or Chiefs. But it may also mean practically any other group, even (as a Los Angeles Times article points out) groups of people long gone: Vikings, Romans, Spartans, Tartars, Moors — you name it, we’ll ban it. In fact, says the Times, “if Goldberg had her choice in the matter, there would be no human mascots whatsoever.” As Goldberg says, there are plenty of “animals, symbols, colors that won’t offend anybody.”

Me, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. After all, take the name of an animal and you run the risk of getting slammed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Call your team (say) the wolves or the sharks and you’ll be accused of fostering negative stereotypes; such noble beasts shouldn’t be presented as ferocious predators, you know. As for inanimate objects, it hasn’t been that long since the NBA’s Washington Bullets had to change their name to the Washington Wizards, lest they be thought to be promoting gun violence. (I only wonder how long it’ll be till we hear charges that the Wizards are an unfair caricature of Wiccan-Americans.)

I follow stories like this with a certain bemused fascination. For one thing, I’m always curious to see what someone will think to complain about next. But beyond that, I find they provide interesting insight into the minds of a certain type of malcontent — a type that tends to cluster in campus towns.

Take the situation at my alma mater, the University of Illinois. There, the team’s symbol (“mascot” isn’t really the right word in this case) dating back to the 1920s has been Chief Illiniwek. The Chief isn’t portrayed as some laughable oaf; he doesn’t utter stereotypical war whoops or clown around with the cheerleaders. He comes out at halftime in authentic American Indian garb (donated by the Oglala Sioux tribe) and performs a stirring dance, featuring a dramatic moment where he slowly opens his arms to the skies. Then he walks off as the crowd keeps respectful silence, holding its applause until he’s off the field.

Now the Chief isn’t exactly historically accurate, to be sure. He’s obviously a romanticized figure; in real life, the tribe known as Illiniwek tended to get clobbered by other tribes, and spent a fair amount of time on the run — not exactly an exemplar of the fighting spirit the Chief’s meant to embody. But he’s far from demeaning; he’s an object of honor, not mockery or drunken celebration. (Any time you can get 70,000 football fans to shut up for a moment, that’s respect.) You can argue that he’s treated with excessive reverence, but hardly that he’s even remotely anti-Indian: Idealizing is the opposite of disparaging.

This hasn’t stopped a vocal anti-Chief movement from arising — disrupting campus events, organizing boycotts, lobbying recruits to stay away from the UI, and other hardball tactics. You can probably guess the sort of language they use (“racist,” etc.), so I’ll spare you that familiar tune. What’s more interesting is who’s in the movement.

It’s not, for the most part, American Indians. Indeed, a recent Sports Illustrated poll of American Indians found that 83 percent don’t want teams to drop Indian names, mascots and symbols. (The activist response, says SI writer S.L. Price, is to gripe that “Native Americans’ self-esteem has fallen so low they don’t even know when they’re being insulted.” But I’ll bet they’d know that’s an insult.)

No, the anti-Chief movement is made up largely of well-to-do white kids from the Chicago suburbs. And that, really, shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s typical of a phenomenon all of us have seen but no one bothered (or perhaps dared) to name, until columnist Joseph Sobran came up with a word for it: alienism.

We’ve all heard of nativism, a word commonly applied to the hostilities and resentments that majorities feel toward minorities. Sobran coined the term alienism to describe the other side of the coin: the hostilities and resentments minorities feel toward majorities. Conflicts along lines of race, religion or sexual orientation aren’t one-way streets: The minority’s hostility may be just as intense as the majority’s, and often more so.

At first glance, you might not expect white suburban kids to be natural candidates for alienism. Yet as Sobran notes, a lot of “natives”* — that is, comfortable, middle-class types — do adopt that perspective; it’s an appealingly simple worldview offering “malcontents of all sorts an ideology . . . that allows them to interpret normal life maliciously as a crude though somewhat disguised struggle between oppressors and victims.” Majorities oppress minorities, whites oppress nonwhites, men oppress women, everyone oppresses homosexuals.

And that’s not all there is to alienism’s appeal. I’d add that someone who’s comfortably affluent might adopt alienist attitudes partly to bolster his self-esteem. I wasn’t born into the oppressed classes, he may think (not that he’ll actually put the thought into words), but I’ve chosen to join their cause anyway. So that’s proof of my strong social conscience.

That sense of moral superiority may explain why such people are so quick to accuse their opponents of the worst motives. A reasonable person could distinguish between a Chief Illiniwek — a character who, whatever else you might think of him, is clearly intended as a tribute — and a degrading racial caricature such as could be found in some places. But that’s not what you get from most opponents of the Chief, or other Indian symbols: They simply deem whatever they oppose to be an insult, an outrage, a racist affront.

Happily, most people — even today — have a more balanced view. As Sobran writes,

We don’t have to choose between nativism and alienism. A healthy native is not an all-out nativist, but rather has a code of hospitality and gallantry that takes into account the position of the alien; and the reasonable marginal member of society is not bound to be a fanatical alienist, even though there are those who would like to inflame his resentments. Both perspectives have their stories to tell. Both can be accommodated by civility and the rule of law, without privileges for either.

Not so happily, that sort of calm, sober attitude — though common to many people across racial lines — tends to get shouted down on campuses. In practice, “multiculturalism” often means not respect for other cultures but loathing for Western culture. And that loathing manifests itself in an intensity and perseverance that ordinary people find intimidating. A minority can be just as bullying as a majority.

Sometimes, though, the often-silent majority does stand up for itself. At the University of Illinois, it’s actually happening. Many students, local folk and alums have been vocal about their support for the Chief, and a lot of those alums have made it clear that if the Chief disappears, so will their donations. (The opposition isn’t the only side that can play hardball.)

In the end, I’ve got a hunch that the Chief (unlike some comparable symbols at other schools) will survive. And that’s a reflection of something healthy. People should have a strong, affectionate regard for their traditions; they shouldn’t be willing to jettison their heritage as soon as it’s deemed offensive by the forces of political correctness. And if a particular tradition is to be abandoned (as some should be), the burden of proof should always lie on those who want to get rid of it.

Granted, this sort of issue is far from the most important place to take a stand for a heritage. But it’s a start — a sign of willingness to resist the PC cultural czars. Who knows; maybe resistance will become a habit.

* The word “native,” as I’m using it, has little to do with who was here first. I expect some readers will denounce my use of the term because American Indians — Native Americans, as we now say — were on this continent before Europeans arrived, but that’s beside my point. “Native” in this context refers to people who essentially feel at home in this country; “alien,” to those who feel marginalized. (To be “native,” by the way, isn’t necessarily better than to be “alien;” I’m not using the words as synonyms for “good” and “bad.” It’s the attitudes that people bring to their status as natives or aliens that may be, to varying degrees, good or bad.)