Please read the whole diary RE AdmiralNaismith’s query and then take the poll.
To many Indiana residents, "Hoosier" means being an adherent of the civic religion of community pride and leader-selection through basketball.
But the word "Hoosier" very possibly has nobler, almost Obama-esque, roots. Black Harry Hoosier, a freed slave, was a very well-known Methodist revivalist on the frontier. Foreshadowing many Americans' acceptance this year of the political leadership of Senator Barack Obama, Hoosier was an egalitarian who downplayed sin while drawing large audiences at camp meetings. "Hoosiers" was a common late-18th century putdown by Virginia Baptists (documented by linguistic geographers), who scorned those Scots-Irish settlers of the Ohio Valley who adhered to the Methodist doctrine of salvation by good works. It is likely (but not proven) that they were called Hoosiers because of guilt by association with Harry Hoosier.
Indiana (Jeffersonian) Democrats did block attempts to allow slavery , frustrating efforts by the Federalist Territorial Governor, wealthy, Indian-cheating, war-provoking William Henry Harrison (the future "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" President)and his Federalist associates. Harry Hoosier must have been known to them.
The scholarship on this, based on church history and linguistic geography, is somewhat circumstantial and neither widely known nor uncontroversial. William Piersen of Fisk University (Indiana Magazine of History, June 1995, http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/... ) concluded: "Such an etymology would offer Indiana a plausible and worthy first Hoosier -- 'Black Harry' Hoosier -- the greatest preacher of his day, a man who rejected slavery and stood up for morality and the common man." Steven Webb of Wabash College (Indiana Magazine of History March 2002), supported Piersen by showing that Hoosier was a frequent circuit-riding companion of the first American Methodist bishop, Francis Asbury (and after whom DePauw University in Greencastle Indiana was originally named) http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/...
Not only did Virginia's Baptist yeoman farmers scorn Methodist-leaning, predominantly Scots-Irish Ohio Valley settlers as "Hoosiers" for rejecting the Calvinistic doctrine of salvation by predestination and accepting the theory of salvation by good works. The Virginians used a different term, "cracker," to refer condescendingly to the poor settlers who took up slash-and-burn subsistence farming in the Carolina and Georgia back-country (who remained Baptists and continued the colonial practice of cultural ostracism and economic exploitation of slaves).
Most Indiana residents are exposed to various implausible conjectures about the words, e.g., that the term was a wilderness-era greeting, "Who's Hyear?" or that riverfront workers were named after a Louisville builder of that name. These and many other conjectures are described in http://www.indiana.edu/... which questions the Pierson-Webb theory.
How is "Hoosier" understood by Indiana citizens in 2008? To their credit, many identify with underdogs. But I believe too many Indiana citizens subscribe to (and some even worship) the state's obsolete civic religion of basketball-team training for community- and state-level business and political leadership which builds small-town loyalties but contributes to an under-emphasis on well-funded public education.
Check out the 1987 film Hoosiers (Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, and Dennis Hopper). Scriptwriter Angelo Pizzo and director David Anspaugh, both Indiana-based, patterned their film loosely on the David-and-Goliath story of Milan High School's capture of the 1954 state championship. The film shows "Hickory High" besting the somewhat larger black and white players in a high-scoring run-and-shoot style of play. In actuality, height-challenged Milan won with a "mouse-and-cat" style (game-slowing ball control, working patiently for open shots) against a much-bigger Muncie Central team, 32-30. Like David’s sling against Goliath’s armor, the film is a last hurrah for the little guys.
Next year, the greatest all-round player in American basketball history, Oscar Robertson, a master of run-and-shoot, and his superb Indianapolis Crispus Attucks H.S. teammates, blew out Gary Roosevelt 97-74. In 1955-56, Attucks had the first-ever perfect season, and easily bested Lafayette Jefferson (my school, and a good one for its time, but fronting a basketball team, known as the "Tippecanoe County All-Stars," filled with excellent but poorly-educated players from rural high schools) 79-57 for the state championship. Fortunately for Indiana's neglected children, a few years later the Democrats (led by Assembly Speaker Birch Bayh and Governor Matthew Welsh) enacted a school consolidation law which, for example, eliminated 11 of the 13 rural high schools in Tippecanoe County, bringing better educational opportunity but fewer basketball games.
Indiana citizens should learn of and appreciate the egalitarian roots of "Hoosier," and not allow nostalgia for small town sports to distract it from such remedies for unequal opportunity as better-funded public schools. Too many children have been left behind so that the fans could continue cheering all these years.
Thanks for reading this diary, which I did not submit as a bicoastal putdown (I have lived in Berkeley almost 40 years). Please use the poll to let me know your thoughtful response.