I know that you are being facetious, but the fact that we don’t have those team names gives support to the idea that “Redskins” is not meant to be offensive. Teams are naming themselves and would not purposely give themselves a moniker that speaks poorly of them. I can’t imagine a team naming themselves the Washington Jerk Offs. Calling an American Indian a “redskin” today has certainly fallen out of favor. I put it in the category of negro and colored, as a non-offensive yet outdated term. If the team called themselves that back in the 1930s then they clearly thought it was a positive term.
That’s it exactly. 1967 was forty seven years ago. It’s just not right to wait 47 years to bring these kinds of suits.
Since 1933, having shared the name of the National League baseball team the previous season. The baseball team had been the Braves since 1912 when a member of Tammany Hall became the club president.
So it seems that they decided they wanted a different name from the baseball team. They had an Indian name, and the other baseball team was the Red Sox. So how about Redskins?
It really doesn’t seem like it was done out of animus.
Or if it did. When only 9% of Native Americans consider it offensive, one has to wonder if it IS objectively offensive. I certainly can’t support that a term becomes offensive only when high-minded liberals believe it to be so.
I’m not sure there is any such thing. Everyone who argues thinks their argument is serious and that their point of view is defensible. In any case you’re essentially saying the registration should only be denied if the name is so offensive that nobody would want to use it in the first place. That doesn’t accomplish much, does it?
Nobody is that casual in naming a team. The team insists it was named in honor of its coach, a guy purported to be a Native American. My understanding is that he was lying. And of course founding owner George Marshall was a notorious racist and his team was the last in the NFL to integrate. So to me it’s hard to give them the benefit of the doubt.
I don’t think my test is that meaningless. If I try to trademark a picture of my erect penis in the background with a foreground caption of “Fuck You” I might show up with a lawyer and argue why it isn’t offensive. I don’t think that there would be serious debate in support of my position.
If “Redskins” is racist, then any other color term is racist.
I have a counter-proposal. I am of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant descent. I have pink skin and reddish-blond hair. While I am indifferent at best to their team, I am perfectly willing to sign over rights to a stylized version of my likeness to the Washington Redskins organization in exchange for a modest stipend sufficient to keep in me in high-speed internet and Chee-tos.
If the various Indian Nations contend that the term is offensive because it a) doesn’t apply to them because their skin is not actually red, and b) it is obviously being used to apply to them as redskinned people, this should evade that paradox, and cover all objections. My skin is red. Me. Name the team after me, put (a cartoon version of) my red face all over their merchandise. They get to be ignored, the team gets to keep its name for the sake of organizational continuity, and I get Chee-tos. Everybody wins.
Do you believe that the term was created disparagingly, to slander Native Americans as people who paint their faces with blood?
Or is it simply that someone with olive to tan skin will often tend to be reddish from sunburn, whether they are an Egyptian Fellah, a Choctaw, or a Swede?
Look, I think the highest-profit commercial move is to change the name. I neither follow handegg nor have any personal reason to root for the Redskins. Were I somehow at a Redskins game, I would probably be rooting against them. I have no particular attachment to this trademark, and trademarks can change. That said–
When this is being pushed by people who believe angry troll etymologies, it gets my back up, because it’s surrendering to a kind of historical fraud.
And yes, it would be pretty goofy to call a team the Blackskins or Whiteskins. Or Goldenskins. Or Blueskins. Wait, those last two aren’t as offensively tin-eared, because they aren’t part of the old black/white color wars.
Wait, maybe context matters? Because that’s what this hinges on.
So why are they called the Redskins? Why is the team in Minnesota called the Vikings? Why does Kansas City have the Chiefs? Is it just possible that it’s an arbitrary historical reference? A tacky one, but aren’t they all?
Again, when an Indian says not to call him a redskin, I’m not sure what to make of that.
If it is that his skin is actually tan and not red (…arguable) then my above offer stands. I am from red people and unashamed. I’ll be their mascot. I’m not even kidding. Cut the Indians out of it completely, since the actual team has nothing to do with Indians. Much like the Detroit Tigers have nothing to do with stripey cats.
If it’s that he thinks he is “red” and is ashamed, maybe it’s time for a new social consciousness campaign. How about “Red Is Respectable”?
If it’s just that saying the sounds |'rɛd skɪn| magically makes me a |'rei sɪst|, well, I can’t help your superstitions other than by defying them.
There used to be a lot of places in the South and the West with names like “Nigger Mountain” and “Nigger River” well into the 40s and 50scbefore they changed their names.