It’s almost too easy to start this thing off with some grand, sweeping proclamation about privilege and “white fragility,” but that would merely be a redundant effort on my part. An effortless twitter search for “Bomani Jones” and the national conversation on Bomani’s shirt will provide you with everything you need in order to draw whatever conclusions you like.

Instead, let’s just take a line straight from Jones himself this morning on ESPN’s Mike & Mike during a brief segment with Molly Qerim and see where we end up:

[…] to have a problem with the logo of this [shirt] would be to have a problem with the Indians, but if you’re quiet about the Indians and now you have a problem with my shirt I think it’s time for introspection.

That works.

The Cleveland Indians, just like the Florida State Seminoles, Atlanta Braves and the pofessional football franchise from Washington D.C. (henceforth referred to as the Washington [REDACTED]s) are sports organizations that march into the highly televised, monetized and lionized arena of competitive entertainment with embroidered mascots modeled after Native Americans.

Or, to be fair … Native American caricatures. Or stereotypes. However you describe it, the phenomenon relies on outmoded characterizations of a social group that remains dispossessed of its existential identity, and reimagined through exaggerated cartoons to sell a product.

FACT: Even if the majority of Native Americans you know — also, you don’t know any — do not see themselves as activists against racist iconography, the reduction of cultural signifiers to lowest common denominators almost guarantees that your passive, milquetoast, half-Cherokee, half-Irish friend who has never once tuned into an NFC pre-season game is still likely to be roped in.

This isn’t even a new topic, but one could mistake the argument for a form of social novelty, especially since earnestly tackling what these images and our cold-handed death grip on these icons says about us is still too fucking hard to admit.

My favorite moment of the segment came when Qerim asked Jones if it’s “time that ethnicity and race should not be a team mascot” (loosely paraphrasing. I suppose this inquiry was meant to appeal to those watching who remain unaware of the burgeoning zeitgeist surrounding the clarion call for fair and truthful representation of social groups. It was as much an honest question as a question devoid of any honest intent to evolve the discussion of said representation.

Except white people, who I’ve had no trouble getting to remind me that no one takes issue with the Notre Dame mascot, thus implying a lesser degree of “big deal” than some other people are making this topic out to be.

Okay, sure. So maybe not everyone has an issue with iconography in sports. Maybe I am alone in questioning the power that brands, symbols and images have over the collective psyche.

Except …

Hey, maybe the producers of Mike & Mike were simply too pressed for time — the segment only lasted about two minutes — for a more meaningful dialogue about Jones’ shirt.

Then again, maybe the narrative of what these symbols mean in a fully corporatized sports landscape don’t fit the voice of Disney’s morning radio money-printing machine. After all, why would “The Worldwide Leader” want to muster more than two minutes to talk about the “elephant in the room” — even though Jones was filling in for host Mike Golic for the entire broadcast?

Here’s TMZ, quoting a source:

“As the show progressed, we felt Bomani made his point and had openly discussed why he was wearing the shirt, and we wanted to keep the focus to the topics of the day.”

Still, even if two minutes was the only fig-leaf segment of time allowed for a discussion on the topic of race, Jones deserves all the credit in the world for making such an important statement so poignantly.

Of course, when Qeirm asked Jones, “Do you think it’s time that there’s a change?,” my eyebrow shot up into my hairline.

This question capped the segment. Like the student who hasn’t studied all year, and must resort to filling in the “C” bubble in the last five minutes of the final exam, asking “if it’s time” is supposed to remind us that ESPN already proclaimed that Dan Snyder couldn’t see that “the future is here” when refusing to change the name of the Washington [REDACTED]s.

But can I really blame a television network — one whose sole purpose is to increase viewership, typically by pitting morons against one another to argue about the parabola of Steph Curry’s twenty-five foot buckets for three hours at a time — for lacking just a wee-bit more conviction?

I really can’t.

Yet the urge to get drunk on this ale of indignation is no less furious. ESPN provoked this by forcing a two-minute rundown on the “elephant in the room” that was less concerned the underlying (and important) issue than it was in trying to save face by having Bomani explain himself while the production crew took a piss break.

Performing a Twitter autopsy nets you predictable results: There are more tweets reacting to the reaction to #BomaniGate than than there are genuine reactions to this morning’s broadcast as it happened. Yes, the pot is still boiling, though, and if you follow @bomani_jones, you might even see him swat away a few angst-fueled morons whose 140-character screeds drift right past recognizing the existential irony of their opinions.

Thankfully, we’ll always have video evidence of ESPN’s featherweight convictions to remind us of the painfully obvious: We still don’t know how to talk about race, even when it’s right there in the room with us. And that is why we will instead ask the easy questions and go back to business as usual.