No one uses “Redskins” for anything other than football discussion. Yours is the kind of ignorance predicated on detachment.
Why aren’t people up-in-arms over the NAACP, or the UNF? Both have heavily racist overtones attached to them.
Your “study” is about as brilliant as Bill Mahr’s “are we ready for a black president” poll prior to the 2008 election. Both are half-witted attempts; both fumble context.
Redskin is an intimate term of honor. Specific tribes painted their faces red. It’s not something you simply call someone. It’s not even a word that is used in modern times.
This is a shining example of a “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” statement and is easy to pick apart for the ridiculous notion that it is: what if everyone in your tiny town hates you and won’t give you food or a job? What if everyone in the next town loathes you also? What if the whole county, state and country also hate you? What if they are all also actively trying to harm you? I bet that defines who you are and what you can become.
No person is an island, and to think that any person’s life doesn’t rely on the goodwill (or at least the absence of overt ill will) of other people is delusional.
We should do a poll of African-Americans about the word “nigger” and whether most find it offensive and whether they’ve adopted the word for themselves and if they understand its true meaning. Then consider whether the results make it a suitable team name.
You’ve been asked several times for cites for assertions you’ve made, and though I doubt this will be the one that you finally respond to, I’ll ask you anyway for the assertions I helpfully bolded in the quote box: cite?
(Note: “Redskins” isn’t a “nickname”, it’s the official name of the football team used in logos, marketing, etc.)
Well, we know there is at least a substantial minority of Native Americans who are offended. And there are various influential Native American organizations, representing a sizeable number of Native Americans, who are officially committed to changing the name because they consider it offensive.
What minimum percentage of a minority group and/or its spokespeople do you feel must be offended by the use of an ethnic slur before you’re willing to take their objections seriously?
That’s because it’s a slur. Check your dictionary.
:dubious: Even if this extremely far-fetched speculation had any truth to it, it would be inappropriate to use an “intimate term of honor” for the name of a sports team. Intimate terms should be reserved for the use of the people who are actually intimate with the people they’re referring to.
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Hey, white liberals. Leave minorities alone. They’re not your puppets. Native Americans remain unfazed by the Redskins nickname. Stop forcing movements.
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Actually, my reasons for wanting the team’s name changed are only about 20% “it’s better to be not racist than to be racist.” The other 80% are “I want to see a rich East Coast Jew lose something really valuable and not get it back.”
:dubious: The 20% of your psyche that thinks it’s better not to be racist than to be racist needs to talk to the 80% that apparently thinks being anti-Semitic doesn’t count.
When I point out that the person profiting from racism is not some old Southern gentleman or good ol’ boy, I do it out of the utmost respect.
I think these two thoughts are related.
First, Kimstu you’ve used the point that the dictionary has this as a slur. That’s probably true, but I don’t think people give a rat’s butt about that. They don’t ready the dictionary and they don’t care. The n-word was a slur in the dictionary for a long time and it was still used.
The n-word is treated as a slur now not because of the dictionary, but because at some level, some critical mass of African-Americans in this country were offended by it to a sufficient extent that it became important enough to rally against. Or put another way, there wasn’t enough offense within the African-American community to stop it previously. It was used by the African-American community, or wasn’t offensive enough when used by others.
So I come back to the point I always do. When is enough offensive enough? Is the 9% found in the poll enough? What is the criteria? Because in America, I can find someone to bitch about just about anything.
If the right critical mass of people are offended it will be changed. But that clearly has to be more than the 9% and has to be viewed as genuine offense, not conjured offense.
You misunderstand how dictionaries work. People who compile dictionaries spend a lot of time examining how people actually use words, and then recording that usage. If every dictionary lists “redskin” as derogatory or offensive, it’s because the people who’s job it is to record how people use language, have noticed that “redskin” is overwhelmingly used as an insult.
The polling is not exactly universally one-sided – a Cal State sociology professor did a more in-depth survey, going to Native American events, making sure “at a high level of certainty” that their tribal identity was legitimate (basically, that they were active enrolled members of a tribal group), polling people individually, and found that 67% of Native Americans believe “redskin” is a racist slur.
And you misunderstand how Americans work then. The dictionary isn’t their moral guide. The real world is. And while I’m only one guy in his 40s in a major city, I’m hard pressed to find anyone who is offended by the term and that that includes my one requisite “American Indian” friend. I don’t see on 9% = overwhelmingly. Something doesn’t add up there.
And you may be right on how dictionary makers determine if something is offensive or not, but I’d like a cite if you can find one. (This isn’t the standard provide a cite dickishness - I’d generally like to see an explanation is you can easily find one.) I can imagine that that English professor types “lean forward” on this type of declaration. I can envision that that driving the bus not the other way around.
Problem is that that guy is not some sort of disinterested scholar. He is an activist on these matters. So when his results happen to align with his exact views and contradict those of major media organizations, I would tend to dismiss them.
I think that should be kept in mind, but I wouldn’t go so far as to dismiss it. If it’s true, and it might be, that lots of white people claim Native American ancestry that is very questionable in less intensive polls like the 9% one, then he might be right that the actual results are much different.
OTOH, his more intensive method of deciding who is or is not a true Native American is rife with opportunities for him to (consciously or subconsciously) cherry-pick who gets included.
I wouldn’t dismiss it if it was the only thing out there, but when it contrasts so markedly with a more impartial poll then I would.
I would too if I believed that another poll was necessarily “more impartial” – but his way of determining whether one is a Native American or not may be less impartial, and more accurate (or not), than the methodology of the other poll.
So I think it’s quite likely that the “true” number of Native Americans who see “redskin” as a racial slur is below 67%, but I also think that it’s quite likely that it’s above 9%. That leaves a huge area of uncertainty. Hopefully we’ll see more polls, with some sort of methodology for ancestry that is more than just a check in the box, considering how many white people may claim Native American ancestry (like my family used to, before a few of us took DNA ancestry tests) based on family myths.
No need to cherry pick. There is quite literally a registry of federally recognized Native Americans one could poll if one were attempting to do this poll honestly. There are four such federally recognized Native Americans living in my house who haven’t been polled on the topic whose opinion (as well as the opinion of the dozens of extended family members) I am intimately familiar with.
Yes, I know. That was precisely the point of my previous post. The dictionary is descriptive. It describes how people actually use words in the real world. If the dictionary lists a term as “derogatory,” that’s because that’s how people are using the word.
Are you asking for a cite that dictionaries are descriptive by nature, or for their specific methodology used to determine the meaning of “redskin?”
I love how a guy who makes a statement like: the other 80% are “I want to see a rich East Coast Jew lose something really valuable and not get it back”, thinks they can tell other people how not to be racist.
After your done speaking, is Casey Anthony going to convey to the audience lessons on motherhood?