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Here's the 'extremely offensive' county fair slogan Native Americans protested. Yes, it got changed.
At the San Diego County Fair. (Image source: YouTube screen cap)

Here's the 'extremely offensive' county fair slogan Native Americans protested. Yes, it got changed.

The 2017 San Diego County Fair had a slogan all set and ready to go — but a Native American tribe took umbrage with the moniker and let officials know about it.

“The logo is extremely offensive in light of the history and experience of genocide for the Kumeyaay Nation and other Native nations during the so-called settling of the west,” Angela Elliott Santos, tribal chairwoman of the Manzanita Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, noted in a letter, the Rancho Santa Fe Review reported.

And what was the offending slogan?

“How the West Was Fun."

Fred Schenk — a member of the 22nd District Agricultural Association board, which operates the state-owned Del Mar Fairgrounds and runs the annual county fair — told the paper "How the West Was Fun" (a play on the iconic handle, "How the West Was Won") may have suggested winning the American West from Native Americans had been “fun.”

“When I read that [letter], my reaction was, 'I want to make sure we don’t disappoint any group that we respect and want to have come to the fair,'" Schenk told the Review. "I want to work with anyone who feels that we didn’t give adequate thought to the slogan.”

The new moniker — "Where the West Is Fun" — was agreed upon Tuesday morning in a meeting between Del Mar Fairgrounds' officials and representatives of the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association, a consortium of 19 tribes, the paper said.

Schenk added to the paper that the county fair website will be updated with the new slogan as soon as possible. As of Friday afternoon, “How the West Was Fun” was still prominently displayed on the website.

“We worked that out and everybody is very pleased,” Schenk told the Review.

Since serving on the fair board on and off for the last 13 years, Schenk told the Review he couldn't recall a similar instance involving a theme that offended a community group.

(H/T: Heat Street)

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Dave Urbanski

Dave Urbanski

Sr. Editor, News

Dave Urbanski is a senior editor for Blaze News and has been writing for Blaze News since 2013. He has also been a newspaper reporter, a magazine editor, and a book editor. He resides in New Jersey. You can reach him at durbanski@blazemedia.com.
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