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Redskins Name Change Thread

Seems to be picking up a lot of momentum. Starting to think it will happen in the next 3-4 years.

I am thinking you might be right. Nothing gives sports reporters a bigger boner than being able to act sanctimonious. I heard John Finestine compare the name to slavery, segregation and discrimination against homosexuals this morning on the radio. I really don't care one way or the other about the name of the team but I do get sick of dumb ass sports reporters acting like this is the biggest atrocity since the Holocaust.
 
I am thinking you might be right. Nothing gives sports reporters a bigger boner than being able to act sanctimonious. I heard John Finestine compare the name to slavery, segregation and discrimination against homosexuals this morning on the radio. I really don't care one way or the other about the name of the team but I do get sick of dumb ass sports reporters acting like this is the biggest atrocity since the Holocaust.

This is just being dishonest.
 
I am thinking you might be right. Nothing gives sports reporters a bigger boner than being able to act sanctimonious. I heard John Finestine compare the name to slavery, segregation and discrimination against homosexuals this morning on the radio. I really don't care one way or the other about the name of the team but I do get sick of dumb ass sports reporters acting like this is the biggest atrocity since the Holocaust.

The genocide of indigenous people in North America was a bigger atrocity than the Holocaust... That's always going to be in the background of this conversation justifiably or unjustifiably, regardless of how dissonant fans' cognitive dissonance is surrounding this issue.

ETA: Wasn't SND who said that...
 
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The genocide of indigenous people in North America was a bigger atrocity than the Holocaust... That's always going to be in the background of this conversation justifiably or unjustifiably, regardless of how dissonant fans' cognitive dissonance is surrounding this issue.

And last I checked, you were vehemently against both the pussification of America and the changing of the name. Has this changed recently? Lots of folks are really entrenched in keeping the name, and I don't think all of that has to do with football and tradition...


???? I have never vehemently against changing the name and I don't think I have ever used the phrase "pussification of America".

I have always been consistent in saying I don't care one way or the other about the name.
 
The name probably needs to be changed. I'm all for railing against overly PC nonsense but you would never have a similar slur in its place for a different race.

Next up on the NFL chopping block: Jacksonville; how could you name a city after the perpetrator of the trail of tears.
 
This is a flagship issue for the "I'm offended that you're offended" crowd.
 
This is a flagship issue for the "I'm offended that you're offended" crowd.

More like "I'm offended because I perceive you to be offended".

I have yet to see evidence that American Indians on a wide scale are offended by the name. I am not saying they are not...they very well might be but I have never seen a scientific poll showing it to be the case. The only poll I have ever seen was taken years ago and it showed the opposite. With all the publicity I would not be shocked to see those feelings have changed.

Again, if I were Snyder I would get ahead of this issue and change it. If he gets creative it could actually be a big money maker for him and we all know that is what he cares about most.
 
More like "I'm offended because I perceive you to be offended".

I have yet to see evidence that American Indians on a wide scale are offended by the name. I am not saying they are not...they very well might be but I have never seen a scientific poll showing it to be the case. The only poll I have ever seen was taken years ago and it showed the opposite. With all the publicity I would not be shocked to see those feelings have changed.

Again, if I were Snyder I would get ahead of this issue and change it. If he gets creative it could actually be a big money maker for him and we all know that is what he cares about most.

Isn't all offense essentially a matter of perception?
 
Isn't all offense essentially a matter of perception?

Sure but you can find offense in anything. If I am not mistaken PETA tried to make a case that teams like the Panthers should change their name because it objectifies animals.
 
Georgetown Law grad David Grosso:

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And the other two on board, Muriel Bowser and Kenyon McDuffie:

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Kenyan+McDuffie+%232.jpeg


You probably don't think these three can change the Name to the Washington Recidivists but Dan Snyder is going to have his hands full with these eager young pols.

Washington DC, on a good day is the third world. These goofs should focus on having schools that teach kids how to read and write.
 
I have yet to see evidence that American Indians on a wide scale are offended by the name. I am not saying they are not...they very well might be but I have never seen a scientific poll showing it to be the case. The only poll I have ever seen was taken years ago and it showed the opposite. With all the publicity I would not be shocked to see those feelings have changed.

Why do you need to, though? There is just no need to continue to propagate racist caricatures via sports logos. If we see the reason why they'd offend, and they do undoubtedly offend, then why is it so hard to have this conversation? Why do you need to see evidence if you can see what the issue is?

IMO, that extends to the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Chiefs, et. al., too. I think we can agree that the world is better for changing the names of the Syracuse Orangemen, St. John's Red Men, Stanford Indians, Sonoma State Cossaks, etc.

There's a clear difference between teams that merely profit off of this imagery (i.e. Ottawa Senators, Chicago Black Hawks, Utah Utes, Florida State Seminoles, Central Michigan Chipewa, South Dakota State Fighting Sioux, etc. come to mind) and teams that literally push the American Indian equivalent of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Remus. "Zip-a-dee-do-dah" is a fine song, but there's a reason why Disney doesn't make Song of the South available anymore. It's not as bad as its reputation suggests (even though, like a lot of Disney movies, it's still pretty racist), but it's just unnecessary.

What emerges from these debates around whether to use American Indian iconography in sporting mascots is the fact that, at the end of the day, the pushback oftentimes goes much deeper than team names and tradition, touching upon something much nastier in the process...
 
Washington DC, on a good day is the third world. These goofs should focus on having schools that teach kids how to read and write.

When was the last time you went to Washington DC?
 
Inside Higher Ed published a good op-ed on this a few years ago.

Eighteen colleges are now on the mascot pariah list of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Three are Braves. Six are Indians. Four identify as specific tribes -- Seminoles, Utes, Chippewas, and Choctaws. Carthage College calls itself the Redmen. The University of Illinois has created its own tribe, the Fighting Illini. The last university on the list -- Southeastern Oklahoma State -- doesn't beat around the bush or go for modifiers. Its team name is the Savages.

American Indian leaders and activists have objected to their tribes' use as sports mascots since the 1970s, but the public has shrugged its shoulders and gone on cheering for its favorite Indians and Redskins, a term one linguist compared to Darkies. It is hard to have a serious public discussion about sports mascots because most of us don't know enough history to put the debate into historical context. Native Americans know this history. These are their family stories.

American Indian sports mascots exist under a double bubble of mythological padding. One layer is the mythology that surrounds, in this case, college sports and the "student athlete." The other consists of the deeply planted myths we have absorbed about American Indians. Under all this mythological wrapping, our thinking tends to get fuzzy. Fake Indians don't seem problematic because they are so very normal, just part of our "cultural wallpaper," in the words of Jay Rosenstein, who made the documentary film In Whose Honor?

The mascot debate is actually the latest in a long series of battles over who controls American Indian culture. Since most of us never learned the history of white/Native relations in our country, the issue seems to have sprung out of nowhere. Until I wrote a book about sports mascots, I never knew the history of forced assimilation. But culture was as much a battleground as land. The U.S. government conducted a strenuous campaign to wipe out American Indian cultures, religions, and languages. American Indian children were forcibly taken from their families to boarding schools where they were physically punished if they spoke their tribal languages or tried to maintain their religious observances. In a country that prides itself on religious freedom, the First Americans had none until 1934. Before this, Native people faced sanctions even when trying to conduct ceremonies and dances on their own reservations. One of the few historical incidents many of us do know about, the tragic massacre at Wounded Knee, took place because American Indians were gathering to dance at a religious ceremony that the government was determined to suppress.

At the same time that we were trying to destroy American Indian cultures, non-Native Americans loved to dress up and play Indian. What could be more American -- we've been doing it since the Boston Tea Party. Mascot performances like Chief Illiniwek, a fictional chief who dances at Illinois on the 50-yard line at halftime or Osceola, who gallops in at Florida State University games carrying a burning lance, trace their origins to the Wild West show, traveling big-tent performances that were part of the American circus tradition. This is why mascot performers and Indian profile logos almost always feature feathered headdresses, no matter what tribe they represent. The feathered headdresses are typical of Wild West performers, who were recruited from the Sioux Nation. Buffalo Bill, the best-known Wild West ringmaster claimed, just like modern universities, that his show was both historically accurate and morally uplifting.

Buffalo Bill's signature acts -- the Indian attack on the settler cabin, on the circled wagons, and on the stagecoach -- survived after the circus era as film and television clichés. Wild West shows were filmed and evolved into Westerns. When Americans flocked to Wild West shows, they believed they were seeing the last vestiges of a dying culture. It was true that Native populations were declining. But this idea, that American Indians would disappear like dinosaurs, became so embedded in American mythology that even today many non-Native Americans are startled to encounter a flesh and blood Native person. Boy Scouts were told it was their patriotic duty to learn Indian songs and dances lest they be lost forever. Thrilled by the Wild West performances, college boys and Boy Scouts emulated the showbiz Indians when they created Indian sports mascots, many of which date from the 1920s.

The college boys and Boy Scouts, despite their good intentions, were working under an enormous misperception. Native American people survived. Their populations rebounded. Having paid dearly to save what is left of their cultures, religions and languages, they want to control how they are used and passed on. Understandably, they resent how lightly colleges appropriate their cultures for entertainment at sports events and it is particularly hurtful that this happens in higher education. The United States Commission on Civil Rights pointed this out in April 2001 when it urged non-Native colleges to retire American Indian imagery and names in sports.

Public symbols that use other minority groups have mostly disappeared. They make us all uncomfortable. Can you imagine the Washington Darkies or the Florida State Chicanos? At Sonoma State University, when Jewish groups objected to the Cossacks nickname, they became the Seawolves within two years. If students were to stage minstrel shows, as they did in the 30s, the students would be justifiably criticized. But when America discusses race, the terms are usually black and white. Native Americans say they feel invisible.

The strong attachment students feel for their mascots or nicknames is not instinctual; it is promoted. Students are indoctrinated into a campus cult of racial stereotyping. Critical thinking on the subject of the mascot must be discouraged and the school has to promote an anti-educational, anti-intellectual reaction. This is even more disturbing because it takes place in a setting of talk about "honoring" Indians. But Indian mascots are fantasy figures, firmly stuck in the past.

One parallel symbol is Aunt Jemima, the slave cook who loved the plantation so much she didn't want to leave when she was freed. She is a white fantasy that denies and betrays the real history of slavery, just like the mascot Osceola. The real Osceola fought against American expansion into Seminole land and was betrayed when he came in good faith to a peace council with American soldiers. But his mascot reincarnation is happy to welcome Florida State fans.

Knowing this history, Native people find it hard to explain to us why mascots are so offensive. We can't hold up our end of the argument. It's like the modern teenager who looks at the Aunt Jemima syrup bottle, sees a positive depiction of a smiling African-American grandmother, and says, "What's the problem? It's so positive."

The problem isn't this particular logo, but the long pattern of denying the history of slavery that the original Aunt Jemima, with the ads depicting her life history, represents. In addition to slavery, there is another reality we have swept under our historical carpet: how we acquired this land we love so much. When you sweep something that large under the rug, you get bumps. Mascots are bumps in our historical carpet, something we are trying to rearrange and deny to make it more appealing. In our version of the story, American Indians just disappeared and our mascots commemorate them with respect and honor.

But American Indians are not gone and they don't want to be commemorated with a halftime Wild West show by fans that know nothing of their culture. Universities' and fans' proprietary insistence -- this is ours and we'll keep it no matter what you say -- is offensive. When the two sides clash on campuses, the racial hostility gets ugly.

The mascot/nickname/logo issue is about how the majority depicts the minority, so if you go to a reservation and interview people randomly, they may say it's not a concern for them. But listening to Native people who have spent time on the campus at Illinois or at the University of North Dakota, I usually hear strong feelings of frustration and bitterness. In those places, everything Native exists in relation to the mascot or nickname. And because American Indians nearly always oppose the mascot, the hardline students who support the mascot become anti-Indian.

Although the mascots are not intended to be hostile or abusive, the campus climate around them certainly can be, especially for Native students. Native leaders and educators, including the American Congress of American Indians, list mascots and anti-defamation as one of the important issues facing Native people.
Native people want to be in our institutions of higher education, not as mascots and sports souvenirs, but as equals and contemporaries -- as students, faculty and staff. They want their history taught truthfully in the classroom, not presented in a false pageant of white longing.

It is not easy to retire a nickname or mascot. The attachment of fans, their identity as Seminoles or Indians, runs deep. Generations of alumni come out of the woodwork, write letters, threaten to withhold money, bring lawsuits. Education is usually a popular enterprise and educators are taken aback at this kind of controversy. The NCAA has given these schools a perfect opportunity to say, "had to do it, couldn't hobble the sports program." I congratulate the NCAA for declaring that American Indians are not an exception to the non-discrimination policies of higher education and college sports that benefit other minority groups. Name and mascot changes can go very smoothly when the campus leadership is united and when they hold to their resolve that a new sports identity is best for the institution. The NCAA policy will have a ripple effect on high schools, another positive result.

Southeast Missouri State avoided the pariah list by changing its nickname this year. In October I spoke at the ceremony when the Southeast Missouri State Indians were retired, to the sounds of Mohican musician Bill Miller's haunting flute music. Everyone in attendance was positive about the future. Everyone was ready to cheer for the SEMO Redhawks. There's a lot of talk in college sports about respect. I felt it that day.
 
I don't really like the source, but the legal/policy history here is more-or-less accurate and really interesting, IMO:

The bill, called the Non-Disparagement of Native American Persons or Peoples in Trademark Registration Act of 2013, if passed, would strip the Washington football team of its trademarked name and put a stop to its exclusive profiteering from using the racist slur in its logo on sweatshirts, tee shirts, caps, coffee mugs and dozens of other products flooding the market. The bill would also prohibit any future trademarks that use the offensive term.

It was introduced in the House of Representatives March 21, by Del. Eni Faleomavaega (D-American Samoa) and co-sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Del. Donna Christenson (D-Virgin Islands), and Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Karen Bass (D-Calif.), John Lewis (D-Ga), Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), Michael Honda (D-Calif.). and co-chairs of the Congressional Native American Caucus Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Betty McCollum (D-Minn.).

...

The legislation—which may not even get a hearing, let alone a vote in the Republican controlled House—adds to the momentum generated earlier this year when a group of Native petitioners argued in a courtroom at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Trial and Appeal Board March 7, challenging the team name “Redskins,” and when the National Museum of the American Indian held an all-day symposium in February on the use of racist names and logos in sports.

The Indian petitioners went head to head before three administrative law judges against the Washington team and the National Football League in an effort to have the name declared offensive and to strip the team of its exclusive right to the name and logo, the most lucrative for paraphernalia sales in all of professional sports.

The petitioners argued that the word “redskins” is a racial slur—like “chink” or “wetback” or “raghead” or “the n-word”—and therefore shouldn’t be entitled to federal trademark protection. The team’s lawyers countered that the name is wholly well-intentioned, an inoffensive honorific of sorts, rooted in pride and tradition.

The case was originally decided 14 years ago against the team’s use of the name, in 1999, when the Patent Board said the name could be interpreted as offensive to Native Americans. Trademark law prohibits registration of a name that “may disparage … persons, living or dead … or bring them into contempt, or disrepute.”

But that decision was overturned on appeal because the plaintiffs who brought the case were deemed to have been too old—that is they waited too long to file their charges in 1992. In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court which sided with the team.

This time the case—Blackhorse v. Pro Football filed by group of six younger Indian plaintiffs who filed the exact same claim against the team in 2006—will likely be decided based on whether the judges rule that “a substantial composite” of Indians find the name disparaging when the team’s trademarks were approved beginning in 1967.

At least 50 Indian organizations, in addition to the National Congress of American Indians, have now called for eliminating all Native American names and mascots in sports. This would include professional teams including the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves in Major League Baseball; the Washington and Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL; and the National Hockey League’s Chicago Blackhawks, among others.

Since 1968 when Native groups began urging high schools and colleges to voluntarily drop names tied to Native Americans, hundreds of schools have discontinued their use of Indian names and mascots. Current National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) policy prevents schools with American Indian-related names from participating in championship or playoff games.

In 2005, the NCAA listed 18 schools that would not be allowed to participate in postseason play until they changed the “hostile and abusive” American Indian mascots or images they used. Stanford University, St. Bonaventure University, The College of William & Mary and Dartmouth College all dropped their Indian monikers.

Florida State University—the Seminoles—and the University of Utah—the Utes—were given exemptions from the ban since they had worked with the local tribes to gain their permission and to ensure the names and images were used in a respectful manner, according to the IPS news service. Utah had been known as the “Redskins” until the 1970s.

The University of Louisiana-Monroe, Arkansas State University and Southeast Missouri State University are also among the universities that have changed their nicknames from “Indians” in recent years. The sports teams of Miami University in Ohio were known as the “Redskins” until 1997.

...

Meanwhile, the trademark office has implicitly recognized a shift in how “Redskins” is viewed. From 1996 to 2002, it rejected at least three attempts by the team when it tried to register new brands using the word. In each case, examiners cited disparagement as the grounds for action.

...


The Native groups which joined in 2009 in friend of the court filings in the original lawsuit were: The National Congress of American Indians; Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, Oneida Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, and Seminole Nation of Oklahoma; National Indian Education Association; National Indian Youth Council; National Indian Child Welfare Association; American Indian Higher Education Consortium; American Indian College Fund; National Native American Law Student Association; Tulsa Indian Coalition Against Racism; Capitol Area Indian Resources; American Indian Studies ‑ University of Illinois (Urbana Champaign); Native American House, a student services unit at the University of Illinois; Wisconsin Indian Education Association “Indian” Mascot and Logo Taskforce; Native Americans at Dartmouth; Native Americans at Brown; National Institute for Native Leadership in Higher Education; Society of American Indian Government Employees; Native American Journalists Association; Native American Finance Officers Association; Indigenous Democratic Network; Americans for Indian Opportunity; Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras and the International Indian Treaty Council.
 
Well I think the answer is simple, get rid of all team nicknames. I mean just about any team nickname could be offensive to someone or something right? Large people might be offended at the name Giants, Men with long blond hair might be offended by the name Vikings, people that have to wear an eye patch might be offended by the name Pirates. Heck, we've got to stop this madness of having anything that, no matter how small the chance, might offend someone........:rulz:
 
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