So, let’s say it’s 1980, and someone’s saying, “It’s bullshit that gay people don’t have the right to marry.” In 1980, that person didn’t have anyway to enforce their opinion on the real world. Was that the end of the story? Turns out, no. While there wasn’t anything to do in 1980, people kept talking about it, and kept pointing out how fundamentally fucked up the situation was, and now, in 2016, gay marriage is legal.
So, do you want to make an actual argument about why it’s okay to name a sports team after a racial slur? Or are you just here for the sneering? Because a lot of people who didn’t like the idea of gay marriage tried that, and it didn’t work out for them.
The difference is that denying persons the right to marry inflicted an actual injury. Hearing an offensive slur is not an actual injury. This is why we have a First Amendment. So my actual argument is: it’s permissible because of the First Amendment.
I don’t say it’s “ok” because I have no idea what that fuzzy word even means to you, and I am certain it means different things to different listeners.
its one thing to make conjecture, but when it comes “from the horse’s mouth,” in this case the Native Americans, that they’re not offended, you gotta take their word. In the past, Jews expressed how they felt, so did other ethnic groups re sports team names, and people listened. Now they’re gonna listen to the Native Americans. Not good enough bc it doesn’t go with a liberal narrative?
That is, indeed, a very significant difference between the two situations. It’s also one that’s not remotely related to the analogy I was making, which was about how to effect change, and not about the relative seriousness of the two issues.
It’s also worth noting that I’ve not, at any point in this or any other thread, argued that the Redskins should be forced to change their name through any sort of legal or state action. So I’m not sure why you’re bringing up the first amendment, here. Or, sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear in post 195 when I said people should keep talking about it until there’s enough popular support to get the attention of people who can force a change? I didn’t mean legislators, there - I mostly meant advertisers, and to a lesser degree, city mayors and voters considering stadium-building ballot measures. I didn’t mean judges or legislators. Dan Snyder is free to call his team the Nigger Faggots if he wants, I’m happy to let the marketplace punish him for that idea. I’m happy to let the market punish him for Redskins, too, even if it takes a bit longer for the market to see there’s a problem with it.
My point was that calling a sports team “The Jews” would be offensive, not (just) because of how Jews might feel about it, but because it isn’t appropriate to name teams after ethnic groups.
How is this a free speech issue? Dan Snyder can call people niggers all he wants. That doesn’t mean he should also have an exclusive right to sell Nigger brand Sports Entertainment.
cough That is, for values of 9% that might actually be as high as 67%, and for synonyms for your coy term “horrible” that include the more straightforward “racist”.
And suppose a more accurate interpretation of “their word”, as per the above survey, is that they are offended, or at least that around two-thirds of them are?
Will you then join the campaign calling for the name change?
I asked you this before and got no answer, but what’s the cutoff minimum percentage of Native Americans that would have to find the team name offensive before you’d support changing the name?
given that more and reputable polls found the opposite, which result will I take? The one that fits the left-wing narrative, or the one with the more common findings, and thus the one that’s more statistically reliable?
As far as market forces go … the team seems to be staying profitable with increasing revenues despite decreasing ticket demand. It is a very valuable property. The pressure on Snyder apparently is exclusively that he’d like to move the team back into Washington DC from its current Hyattsville, Maryland location and political support and taxpayer funding for a new stadium there may be difficult when your team is named with an ethnic slur. The current FedEx stadium lease is not up until 2026 though.
I didn’t ask you which result you would “take”, or which polls you chose to consider more “reputable” or more “reliable”. I asked you what you consider the cutoff minimum percentage of Native Americans finding the “redskin” name offensive before you would support changing it.
If your honest answer is “There is no cutoff, even if 100% of Native Americans wanted the team’s name changed I would still support keeping it”, okay then, but in that case you don’t get to wave around the various poll numbers as though any of them provides any kind of justification for your choice to support the use of an ethnic slur as a team name.
If I’d asked you in 1980 about gay marriage, you’d likely have told me the same thing. In fact, I’m pretty sure you would have told me that gay people should not be allowed to marry if I asked you then. So that would have been two things you would have been wrong about in 1980.
I’m reasonably comfortable that we’ll arrive at the same place again, given enough time.