Just because not many people are offended doesn’t change the fact that it’s s stupid name, and no one with any sense would name a team that today. Since name changes aren’t that unusual, pick something that relates more to DC. Here are a few:
The Washington Insiders
The Washington Lobbyists
The K Street Gang
The Washington Congresscritters
Any of those would be preferable to “Redskins”.
Just an anecdote, but I worked with a woman who claimed to be part Cherokee (it’s always Cherokee, it seems like) and used it to qualify for NA-based grants.
Another co-worker, who did have some Cherokee background, once told me the first woman didn’t know what the Trail of Tears was.
I like “Washington Warriors”, and replacing the NA dude’s head logo with a tomahawk.
Keep the name, change the mascot to a redskin potato. Problem solved.
Interesting to see some here trying to find a way to discredit the poll or say the results really don’t matter. My guess is that the very same people would say how valuable and impressive the poll was, and how important the results were if it found that 90% of Native Americans were offended by the name. The Post if very left leaning and liberal. If it could have proved that the name was offensive, it would have.
Outside of this debate, I’ve never head that the name “Redskins” was offensive. When I learned that it is used as a mascot by some sports teams on Reservations I was very certain that it wasn’t a big deal. Now learning that only 9% find it offensive, it’s a done deal for me.
If I took a poll, more than 9% of people would be found to be offended by the Easter bunny, Santa Clause and a guy handing out free gold bars. A solution is search of a problem if ever there was one.
To quote a god of a man “People lie”. -Greg House
504 people (self-identified) out out a few million saying it’s ok is considered the end all be all? My Band (which is more than 500 people) says it’s offensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlk6PUgA_2g&feature=youtu.be
Which represents 20,000 natives out of 5,400,000.:rolleyes:
It’s not challenging to discredit. Unless they show that they surveyed 50,000 people, then they absolutely no doubt about it surveyed a bunch of Native Americans who are not Native American. It’s not an opinion. It’s math.
Polls of active enrolled tribal members show very different results.
So my local school district has been the redskins since 1898. Decades before any sort of racial sensitivity. Majority feel it’s not offensive. Me too though I recognize it’s hardly honorable and would not be chosen today. I suggested they change it to the rednecks as that more accurately portrays the the reputation of the townspeople here. Turns out that was found too offensive to consider. I do like the icon of the warrior profile in war bonnet that is s carved in stone and on district merch. But the redskin name should be changed imho.
Now THAT is how you do it! Good show.
It would be especially appropriate in Washington, given the team’s history.
Who cares if some percentage of the people being disparaged don’t find it offensive? That’s not the point, the point is that it IS offensive.
I’m sure many minors might not be against having sex with adults, it’s still illegal. Because it’s wrong not because of their opinion. The same with many jurisdictions and domestic violence cases, you can’t always allow victims to make the decisions.
And, yes, I know my examples are not exactly equivalent, and I’m not saying native Americans should be treated like children or battery victims.
I remember when the NBA’s Washington Bullets were changing their name. The old one brought about too much imagery of violence, evil, deadly destruction and so on …
… I guess the Arlington Bullets didn’t catch on …
So any any survey group of less than 50,000 by definition can not contain Native Americans, and this is a mathematical certainty??
Hard to argue with that.
I think “pretend to be Indian” is a little insulting. Many people have 1/4 or even rarely 1/2 native heritage, but their tribe is restrictive.
The difference is the way their sample was chosen. The Post has alot of experience with polls and they should be able to get a representative sample. If their numbers are accurate than around 500,000 Indians find the name offensive. It should not be hard to find 500 who have that opinion.
I think this is worthy of more study - is there a big difference within the Indian community by band or tribe? Do certain bands or tribes find the word offensive when others don’t? And why?
Wow, there’s a lot to unpack from this post.
A couple of questions:
Who determines what is offensive? Any member of the disparaged party, or does it require some percentage. If only one Native American out of 3 million considered a logo offensive, and the rest didn’t, would it still be offensive? It would seem to me that criteria similar to the SCOTUS obscenity criteria could be used here: the average person. What % of Native Americans is considered average?
Are you really trying to compare offensive naming to sex with minors? Seriously? Not exactly equivalent, well how are they equivalent in any sense?
Just to be clear, I don’t know of any government action to force the team to change its name.
If we are talking only in terms of the federal trademark law’s prohibition on registration of disparaging terms, the standard is a “substantial component” of the group in question. So, it doesn’t have to be a majority. 30 percent has been found to be substantial in the past. I would guess that 10 percent would also be found substantial.
We have the same thing going on here in Houston. The brain-dead morons that currently compromise the Houston Independent School District Board have decided that we need to waste buckets of taxpayer dollars renaming schools that were named after Confederates, simply so that no one might possibly be offended. :mad:
The OP is conflating “being offended” with “rejecting as inappropriate”. Which is not surprising, as the two concepts are closely linked, but they’re not the same thing.
The term “redskin” for American Indians/Native Americans is currently regarded as an ethnic slur. The fact that it was historically considered acceptable, and that it has a history as a well-known team name, and even that many of the people it references don’t feel personally offended by it, doesn’t change the fact that it’s inappropriate to use an ethnic slur as an official sports team name.
Similarly, the Frisco (TX) team “Fighting Coons” changed their name in 2002 to the full-version form “Fighting Raccoons”. (“Coon Memorial Stadium” was renamed to “FISD Memorial Stadium”.) The Pekin (IL) “Chinks” teams have changed their name to “Dragons”. And so on.
**AFAICT, such changes typically came about not because of any massive uproar of offendedness on the part of people referenced by the slur, but because of objections calmly articulated by management/fans/parents/etc. without angry controversy. **
And that’s where we are in the “Redskins-name” debate now, AFAICT. We shouldn’t need angry outrage and pickets and rioting on the part of tribal groups to calmly and rationally acknowledge that ethnic slurs are inappropriate as sports teams names in this day and age.