My understanding is that there are exactly three majority-Native schools using the “Redskins” name for their own teams. At one of these, Red Mesa HS (enrollment 320), in the Navajo corner of Arizona, Student Council President Michael Lameman said, “It’s not a racist slur if it originates from a Native American tribe.”
Is there an argument in there, or just an insult?
Well they wouldn’t, would they? 
So first off clearly the specific poll is crap data.
Right there is the full stop. Given that median household income for Native Americans is $36,252 (compared to $52,176 for the nation as a whole) it is imediately obvious that this is minimally a non-representative sample of the Native American population. This is a wealthy group they selected, wealthier than most Americans, and certainly wealthier than most Native Americans. Something was wrong with methodology.
The finding is also clearly contradicted by other polling.
I know many here cannot be bothered to click links so from that link, asked to agree or disagree that “The Redskins team name is a racial or racist word and symbol.”:
So, one poll shows that of people randomly selected who claimed Native American identification and who do not at all match the demographics of Native Americans as a whole about 1 in 10 found the name offensive. And other polls find that 2/3s of Native Americans find the name offensive.
Of note re the 2004 poll that the article refers to: the designers of the poll explicitly state that their poll did NOT support such a conclusion. Interestingly their comments may shed some light on why this poll also ends up with a population so clearly not a representative sample of Native Americans:
No, not done with accepted standard industry standards for studying sub-groups like Native Americans; inappropriate to use for such purposes.
But still, let’s accept this garbage data as a hypothetical. Hypothetically roughly 10% of a disadvantaged minority population finds a team name to be a racist insult. Should others who are not in that minority respect that or continue to use the term? Reality seems to be that it’s two out of three who find the term offensive, but what should be the cut-off of how many? Personally I’d say even one in ten would be a pretty high number to be using a term that they perceive as racist and which has a standard definition as a racist slur. What’s the point of using a name that insults that many of a minority group?
My personal take is that the smaller and more “outsider” the minority group is, the less power the group has within society as whole, the more fragile their status within greater majority society, the more careful the majority should be in the use of even potentially offensive language, and the more others should be willing to speak up on their behalf. Native Americans are 1.7% of the population, and while 44% of those in that WaPo poll make over $100000/year, one in four Native Americans live in poverty and one in five live on reservations. No group has a higher poverty rate than the “Native American alone” group.
If any group should have members of the majority speaking up against casual racism against them, this one should.
Yup. The fact that a small group of Native American students in a tiny reservation based High School whose team plays other reservation based teams don’t mind going along with what the team has always been called since likely some White administrator named it, is important.
Now we can proceed to stating that since some Black Americans will call each other “nigger” that Anaheim should switch from that goofy “Ducks” name to calling themselves “The Anaheim Niggers” …
Butbutbut…they’re allowed to say it!
I think that’s kind of missing the point. Nobody here (except possibly DerekMichaels00?) is saying that there is some cutoff minimum percentage of self-identified ethnic-group members that has to find a name offensive before that name can be considered an ethnic slur, or trying to stick a particular number on what that minimum should be. That alleged quantitative “bar” you’re talking about doesn’t exist.
The point is simply that the word “redskin” is generally recognized to be an ethnic slur. It’s in the dictionaries and everything. That’s reason enough—besides the fact that many Native Americans and organizations that represent Native Americans are strongly opposed to its use—to avoid using it for the name of a sports team, especially one that doesn’t even represent Native Americans in any way, shape or form.
? I don’t understand why it seems incomprehensible to you that many groups casually use somewhat derogatory or pejorative names for themselves, even while recognizing that the name is pejorative and inappropriate as a regular identifier, especially for out-group use.
As I said above, many Irish and Irish-Americans call themselves “Micks”—but they don’t want a mayor in an official speech referring to “the Mick population” of their city. Many women will refer to themselves in a group of women as “us chicks”—but they don’t want the company HR manual talking about maternity leave for “chick employees”. I trust the analogy for the “N-word” is obvious, and so on.
If our society ever gets to a point where the name “redskin” is not generally considered pejorative or derogatory, then teams that have abandoned the name for reasons of respect could always change the name back, if they wanted to. Hell, if we get to a point where all modern ethnic slurs end up being considered as harmless and quaint as “Trojans” and “Gladiators” and so forth, I don’t give a fuck if people want to call their teams the “Coons” and the “Massas”, or the “Yids” and the “Huns”. (Imagine what some of those team cheers would sound like :rolleyes:, although of course if you happen to follow the Amsterdam team FC Ajax you don’t have to imagine them.)
But we’re definitely not anywhere near such a point yet. In the meantime, and perhaps for all time, as I said, it seems much more sensible just to follow the general rule of thumb that names or nicknames of currently or recently existing ethnic groups, especially when they are generally recognized as pejorative, are not appropriate names for a sports team.
LOL. Well played. 
This might help illustrate why some people get offended on someone else’s behalf:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
I’m Chinese. I don’t want anyone using a slant-eyed chinese in a fu-manchu mustache and buck teeth wearing a straw hat as their mascot and calling themselves the Orientals. The “redskin” word is a slur, and deserves to be abolished as a mascot and team name. Whether enough Native Americans are offended or not is irrelevant as long as some are.
The problem with an absolutist position like that is that there’s always someone offended at anything. You have to draw the line somewhere.
I was offended by the redskins name when I thought I was Cherokee. Ancestry DNA proved I have no native blood and now I find the name perfectly fine.
I’m kidding, I think this is the dumbest (non) issue I’ve ever heard. NFL teams are given tough mascots. Bears, panthers, patriots, vikings, etc… redskins is a tough name in my opinion. Chiefs are tough sounding too but less outlaw-y and kickass. I really was raised thinking I had native blood, and I really thought the name was cool then and I still think the name is cool.
The fact that 44% of the self identified Indians in their survey also claim to be a member of a tribe is also completely out of whack with the existing numbers; nowhere near that percentage of self identified Indians nationwide are members of federally recognized tribes. The sum of the top 50 largest tribes is only a grand total of 750K people (and the 50th largest tribe has 850 people). So, mathematically, there is no way that there are more than 1.2 Million federally recognized Indians in the US. The census counts 5.4 Million self identified Indians. So, VERY generously, somewhere around 20% of self identified Indians are members of federally recognized tribes. No mention of how they happened to more than double this very generous number in this poll.
So, either we have a poll that somehow luckily managed to get a hugely disproportionate number of self identified Indians and were even more fortunate that this population happened to have a hugely disproportionate number of federally recognized Indians or we have a poll where a disproportionate number of non-Indians represented themselves as Indians and who, not coincidentally because they aren’t actually Indians, weren’t offended by “Redskins”.
The latter is much more consistent with existing data.
One datapoint to consider is that certain tribes have been engaged in culling exercises to reduce the number of people officially considered to be members of that tribe. Unsurprisingly, money tends to be a factor here; this occurs where there’s a lucrative tribal business (casinos!) with profits divided up amongst all official members. Fewer members, mo’ money for the rest. I don’t know if this is statistically significant though, nor whether it’s relevant in this particular case.
And in this case it’s an extremely easy line to draw. Just don’t name sports teams by the names or nicknames of any currently or recently existing human ethnic group.
That way, no matter what group names or nicknames end up being considered slurs or stop being considered slurs or whatever, sports teams’ images will be unaffected. Couldn’t be simpler, really.
But that doesn’t cover any number of other situations in which people will be offended at things that are not “names or nicknames of any currently or recently existing human ethnic group”. If you object to anything that anyone finds offensive there’s no limit, as I said, and your deciding to limit this principle to names or nicknames etc. is arbitrary.
Good point. By contrast, anyone with any amount of Irish blood, no matter how minuscule, is allowed to self-identify as Irish in the USA. This is because one doesn’t officially get anything for being Irish - there is no free Irish money or land reserved for Irish.
I’m honestly trying to understand if it’s so universally accepted that “Redskin” is not offensive, why are you calling them “Native Americans”? Shouldn’t you just call them the inoffensive name “Redskins”?
I was told there would be kisses.
You’re actually comparing the naming of a football team to the holocaust that claimed upwards of 10 million people? Thank God there’s no danger of political correctness going amuck here.
Interesting article from the Washington Post:
part of the story:
“Still, non-Indian critics like me can’t ignore the poll results or pretend they make no difference. Those who have opposed the team name include more than a quarter of Washington-area residents, along with President Obama, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and 50 Democratic U.S. senators. Many of us thought we were defending a group that needed support. But it feels presumptuous for us to say we know Indians’ interests better than they do. We can’t argue that 9 out of 10 Indians somehow just don’t realize they’re being insulted. Some Indians told The Post that they actively support the name, because its use means Native Americans haven’t been forgotten.”