I already showed my work above, so I think they need to show theirs. Once more:
It is difficult to find the number of federally recognized Indians, but in short, 5.1 million people identify as Native American. The top 50 tribes have a total of 750K members. The 50th largest tribe has 850 members. There are 566 federally recognized tribes, therefore there are 516 tribes not accounted for in that 750K number. If I assume the absolute worst number for my argument and say that all 516 of those remaining tribes have 849 members (which would be ludicrously high) that is another 440,000. Thus there are, at absolutely maximum, 1,200,000 (750K plus 440K) federally recognized enrolled Indians. 1.2 M is 23.5% of 5.1 million. In all likelihood this number is much, much lower and probably closer to 17 or 18%. Yet, somehow they got 44 percent in their random sample. All cites for these numbers were provided above.
You’re correct about what I’m doing but incorrect that there’s no such dependence etc. Unless you can make a case that there’s some reason to distinguish with regards to this specific issue between this type of offense and other types of offense.
Otherwise it’s like saying you can avoid the problem of dying in a green car crash by not driving green cars “and if you can’t solve the problem of dying in other colored cars, well you can’t solve all the problems but you should at least solve some”. That would be silly, as is what you’re saying.
Thanks. I can see now where you made your mistake about the income.
When you click on that arrow for the drop-down box and pull up “income over $100,000” and it says “44% yes 56% no”, it is not saying that 44% have income over $100K as you presumably assumed. What it’s saying is that of those whose income was over $100K, 44% answered yes to the first question, which was “are you enrolled as a member of a tribe?” IOW, 44% of those responding to the survey whose income was over $100K were enrolled as members of a tribe. (You can get similar results for the breakout of the answers to the other questions.)
It does not state anywhere that 44% of those surveyed were making over $100K, as you’ve stated here.
They don’t need to do anything. They’re claiming that their results match the US Census, so you need to reference the US Census in disputing them.
Where I think you’re going wrong here is that your 5.1M number is off. That’s the number of people in the census who have full or partial NA ancestry. Only 2.9M identified as being NA or Alaskan alone cite. The WP only counted those who identified themselves as NA. So they’re consistent with the US census, and your claims are invalid.
In sum, all your claims about the methodology of this survey were based on misunderstandings, and the survey can be presumed to be solid. (By contrast, the other survey is a smaller survey done by an activist group and is less reliable.)
Unfortunately I am over my month’s allotment for WaPo so trusted FYL’s post as a source. If inaccurate then that critique is withdrawn. The critique based on that it seems to be a similar method to the Annenberg study, the designers of which said was inappropriate to be used to poll the Native American population and draw any meaningful conclusions from, stands however.
As to the answer of if 9% is enough … my answer there stands as well. Again -
The smaller the group and the more tenuous and lower level their power position is within a society the greater the caution the majority and the powerful should use regarding offense, and the greater the obligation of bystanders to stand up to any potential abuses of power against them.
This is a small and very low power population. Given the status of Native Americans in our society, again, none with higher poverty rates, none with lower high school graduation rates, so on, and a word that is literally by definition an insult, 9% feeling that a word is racist against them would be enough for me to feel that the word should not be casually used as a team name.
What fraction of a small overwhelmingly poor minority would you feel need to feel that a term is racist against them before you’d want to not use the word?
Yes, because as every reasonable person knows, a comparison can be made between two things regarding the similarity of its logic, and does NOT need to be about the difference of their severity.
It is correct to say that the people who justified the holocaust are using similar language to those who want to deny proper bathroom usage, even if one’s more extreme. And it is correct to say that calling Native Americans a slur is similar to the dehumanization during the American slave trade. They are similar in logic, not severity. If I dropped a marble on your foot, I did the same thing only on a smaller scale, than if I dropped an airplane on it.
I truly don’t understand why we need to validate why Native Americans (and some magical, indeterminate percentage of them at that) are offended by the name “Redskin” when literally by definition it’s already been determined to be offensive.
It is offensive. The team is playing with an offensive name. We seem to be talking about the wrong thing.
More useful questions might be:
Are we as a society ok with this? (So far, yes - I think DSeid may be onto something as far as why this is)
How long will we be ok with this? (Yes, Bricker, this is a useful question)
Will it take legislation to force a change? (Yes, Bricker, another good point)
Will the NFL force the change?
The OP originally seemed to be asking about why other people seemed to feel it was necessary to get offended on behalf of others, especially others who couldn’t give two rats’ asses. DSeid’s exactly right. People get offended because sometimes those other groups don’t have a real voice in society, for a whole host of reasons. People get offended because people in groups get more done than people acting as individuals. People get offended because sometimes movements take a long, long time to gain enough momentum to enact a change.
In may seem silly to some people to kick up a ruckus about the name of a football team, but it’s splashed all over millions of households every week. It reinforces negatives stereotypes. It seems a holdover from a different time in American behavior. I think we can do better.
But let us take a look at your “No True Scotsman” issue here. Your point seems to be that “real Indians” would hate the name Redskins, and thus the poll must be wrong and that the poseurs are weighing the results wrong.
Well, of course besides the issues of who is a “Real Indian” (there is a legal definition, but ever since some tribes started getting big bucks from casinos and spreading that among the members the definition has become a little self serving, since the fewer Members, the more $$), there’s the big Elephant in the room- who is to say that self-identified native Americans arent just as concerned (or not) about “Redskins” as those who are a member of a recognized tribe?
I’ll withdraw that tangential claim. You’re right. It was a misreading.
This, however, I disagree with. Here is how they selected “Native Americans” (according to the authors of the poll):
“All survey respondents identified themselves as Native Americans, American Indians or Alaska Natives when asked, “Do you consider yourself white, black or African American, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander, mixed race or some other race?” While many multi-racial Americans have partial Native American ancestry, the survey focused only on those who first identified themselves as Native Americans. This definition most closely compares with the Census Bureau’s categorization American Indian Alone, rather than American Indians in combination with another race.”
They didn’t say that they only accepted people who have full or partial ancestry. As long as the person identified Native American first, they are Native American in this poll. They could be 1/32 (or frankly 0/32 Native American) and the rest Irish, and this poll would still count them. They can claim that this most closely compares to the Census Bureau categorization of American Indian alone, but there’s nothing to back that up. They would not be disqualifying mixed race subjects (or totally non Indian subjects for that matter). And in the census, that is over 5 million people as it is not remotely the same as those that are solely Indian in the census.
If they had honestly wanted to poll Native Americans alone, there’s a way to do that. By polling actual Native Americans. They aren’t unicorns. They can be polled. In fact, it was done, as cited above. And they considered the term Redskin offensive.
You don’t find it remotely odd that in this poll, there is absolutely no difference in opinion on the word Redskin between Natives and non-Natives? You don’t think the possible alternate explanation is that the “Natives” polled had no actual biological and/or cultural affinity for being Native? So, they’re two groups were actually not different groups?
That Redskin is an ethnic slur is the only reason I think they should change it, and what makes it different from the Chiefs, Braves, Seminoles, Fighting Irish, Vikings, etc.
I’ll go a little more in depth: it’s entirely possible that there are circumstances and even localities with native American people in which Redskin is not used as a slur. But it’s still a slur, and one with a long history of being a slur, to many.
So even if kike or nigger is sometimes not a slur to some Jews and black people in some places or to some people, I would still think it’s being extremely obnoxious to name a team in a nation wide league the Kikes or the Niggers, whether it’s 90% or just 9% who are offended by it. It’s that it’s a slur with a long history of being used as a slur that makes it so rude and un-neighborly, to me, and not the percentage of people in a community that are offended by it. Not to mention that many who aren’t offended by it might still oppose it being used as a team name for a commercial league.
There was a time in certain areas of America when most people wouldn’t have objected to slavery either, although you probably wouldn’t have had the same response from slaves, since they weren’t considered people and could not vote on such matters. Popular opinion does not necessarily determine the rightness or wrongness of a course of action. I mean, look at the popularity of Donald Trump for president if you want to see the lunacy of popular opinion.
My point was that popular opinion does not determine the rightness or wrongness of a course of action. “Redskins” may seem like an innocuous insult to many, but I’ll bet the Washington Spooks would raise a few eyebrows. Why the need to push the envelope? At one point, there was no way people wanted to part with the terms fireman, policeman, or chairman. Today, firefighter, police officer, and chairperson are used and no one complains. Times change.
Wasn’t George Marshall, the team’s former owner, a big fat racist? It seems to me that when determining whether or not something is a slur or is offensive, the speaker as well as the target should be considered. So what if WaPo managed to find the thickest-skinned NAs in the country?
So, in the face of all this opposition, team owner Dan Synder says, in effect: “Screw off. It’s my team. See? ‘Property of Dan Synder,’ written right here. I’m not changing the name. I refuse to listen to your chiding. My team, my rules. Whatcha gonna do about it?”
