Washington Football Franchise team name discussion

[StrangeSox]

That should be the real test here. You can't use Chicago N**** because it clearly doesn't have the same meaning or context. If the use of "n*****" went out of style 40-50 years ago, and we rarely, if ever, hear anyone use it as a slur today, and a professional league maintained that name throughout that time, then yeah, i'd say keep it.

jesus christ that is just awful

[Jenksismyhero]

jesus christ that is just awful

 

So words can never lose their negative connotation? It's not a question of "oh just get used to it." It's that the word basically drops out of the lexicon of society for decades but for one instance where it's being used as a nickname for a team.

 

edit: added "for decades."

Edited August 20, 2014 by Jenksismybitch

[Chisoxfn]

This is being vastly over-complicated.

 

Redskin was, for a few hundred years, and still is, a racist insult. Just like "the N word". And, just like that word, the name was more flippantly and callously applied some time ago. So we have a football team with that name.

 

The people who are targets of it - as well as people who feel that they've gotten a pretty s***ty shaft already from this country - are offended. Lots of them. In fact from what I've read, just about every AmerInd person or leader that's been asked is offended.

 

To me, that is plenty enough to make a change. An insulting, racist name that offends most of a group? Change it.

 

Finally, as for the whole "PC Police" argument, that always cracks me up. What you are seeing here - people putting pressure on a business to make a positive change - is a great and quite American thing. It's cool to watch, and it symbolizes one of the positives of both capitalism and free speech.

 

I hope the name changes, and I think it will, probably pretty soon. Really at this point it's just the owner (who has been shown to be quite the model citizen) holding out, and I think he eventually caves to that economic pressure. That will be a good day.

All good points. One thing I will point out is, last I heard, I thought the fan base was fairly outspokenly in favor of what the owner was doing in support of the name. That said, I am not arguing for keeping, but agree with the concept if everyone in a certain race is offended by it (that said, I have never seen an actual poll other then from people involved in the primary groups that have been protesting this for years), it isn't a good idea. I do think their is a difference between the use of Redskin and a term like the Tribe for the Indians or names like the Braves or Seminoles. Those are not derogatory in nature, imo.

 

Note: I'm specifically talking names, not mascots, etc.

[Jenksismyhero]

You don't get to decide whether a group targeted by a racial slur gets to find it "cute and funny" and whether or not it matters if they're subjected to racial slurs and stereotypes. Members of that group do.

So which argument are you actually making here? That there are more important issues, or that this isn't even a racial slur in the first place and there's no reason to change it?

 

Lol, I love this. He can't, but you can because you agree with the group. Gotcha.

 

What if it turns out that the majority of native americans DON'T find it offensive? Does that matter?

Edited August 20, 2014 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

Racial slurs targeted at disenfranchised minorities, especially those with the history of that word, no. Certainly not within "40-50 years," which is still within living memory of many people who had to literally risk their lives in order to get their basic civil liberties.

 

If you're going to argue that there are bigger issues facing the AmerIndian community (there are! literally no one on this planet would disagree!), you can't argue that it's also okay to continue using racial slurs and caricatures targeted at them because they may not be used as frequently anymore (except every time they are used to depict an AmerIndian as the NFL team's logo!)

[EvilMonkey]

The people who are targets of it - as well as people who feel that they've gotten a pretty s***ty shaft already from this country - are offended. Lots of them. In fact from what I've read, just about every AmerInd person or leader that's been asked is offended.

Serious question, do you have a link to this supposed percentage? I hear people saying that all the time, but nobody ever provides evidence. You have the same dozen or so groups that speak out about it, so of course you hear them. I know I have read stories where some Indian leaders have said pretty much that they don't give a s*** about the name one way or the other, but can't remember where I saw them. I will try and look for them.

[StrangeSox]

Lol, I love this. He can't, but you can because you agree with the group. Gotcha.

 

Weird, I thought I explicitly said already that I can't because I'm not the target of it? Oh, wait, I did!

 

What if it turns out that the majority of native americans DON'T find it offensive? Does that matter?

It might. What if a plurality do? What if a substantial minority do?

[StrangeSox]

Serious question, do you have a link to this supposed percentage? I hear people saying that all the time, but nobody ever provides evidence. You have the same dozen or so groups that speak out about it, so of course you hear them. I know I have read stories where some Indian leaders have said pretty much that they don't give a s*** about the name one way or the other, but can't remember where I saw them. I will try and look for them.

There are multiple AmerIndian groups that have worked to get the name changed. Why is that not sufficient to stop using a racial slur? Why is it so important to some to continue to use racial slurs?

[Jenksismyhero]

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/08/...kins-is-a-slur/

 

WASHINGTON — The name of a certain pro football team in Washington, D.C., has inspired protests, hearings, editorials, lawsuits, letters from Congress, even a presidential nudge. Yet behind the headlines, it’s unclear how many Native Americans think “Redskins” is a racial slur.

 

Perhaps this uncertainty shouldn’t matter — because the word has an undeniably racist history, or because the team says it uses the word with respect, or because in a truly decent society, some would argue, what hurts a few should be avoided by all.

 

But the thoughts and beliefs of native people are the basis of the debate over changing the team name. And looking across the breadth of Native America — with 2 million Indians enrolled in 566 federally recognized tribes, plus another 3.2 million who tell the Census they are Indian — it’s difficult to tell how many are opposed to the name.

The controversy has peaked in the last few days. President Barack Obama said Saturday he would consider getting rid of the name if he owned the team, and the NFL took the unprecedented step Monday of promising to meet with the Oneida Indian Nation, which is waging a national ad campaign against the league.

 

Oneida Nation: Taxpayers Can’t Pay to Help Redskins Profit off of ‘Racial Slur’

 

What gets far less attention, though, is this:

 

There are Native American schools that call their teams Redskins. The term is used affectionately by some natives, similar to the way the N-word is used by some African-Americans. In the only recent poll to ask native people about the subject, 90 percent of respondents did not consider the term offensive, although many question the cultural credentials of the respondents.

 

All of which underscores the oft-overlooked diversity within Native America.

 

“Marginalized communities are too often treated monolithically,” said Carter Meland, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota.

“Stories on the mascot issue always end up exploring whether it is right or it is wrong, respectful or disrespectful,” said Meland, an Ojibwe Indian.

 

He believes Indian mascots are disrespectful, but said: “It would be interesting to get a sense of the diversity of opinion within a native community.”

Those communities vary widely.

 

Tommy Yazzie, superintendent of the Red Mesa school district on the Navajo Nation reservation, grew up when Navajo children were forced into boarding schools to disconnect them from their culture. Some were punished for speaking their native language. Today, he sees environmental issues as the biggest threat to his people.

The high school football team in his district is the Red Mesa Redskins.

 

Redskins Fan Cried Over Trademark Ruling

 

“We just don’t think that (name) is an issue,” Yazzie said. “There are more important things like busing our kids to school, the water settlement, the land quality, the air that surrounds us. Those are issues we can take sides on.”

 

“Society, they think it’s more derogatory because of the recent discussions,” Yazzie said. “In its pure form, a lot of Native American men, you go into the sweat lodge with what you’ve got — your skin. I don’t see it as derogatory.”

 

Neither does Eunice Davidson, a Dakota Sioux who lives on the Spirit Lake reservation in North Dakota. “It more or less shows that they approve of our history,” she said.

North Dakota was the scene of a similar controversy over the state university’s Fighting Sioux nickname. It was decisively scrapped in a 2012 statewide vote — after the Spirit Lake reservation voted in 2010 to keep it.

 

Davidson said that if she could speak to Dan Snyder, the Washington team owner who has vowed never to change the name, “I would say I stand with him . we don’t want our history to be forgotten.”

 

In 2004, the National Annenberg Election Survey asked 768 people who identified themselves as Indian whether they found the name “Washington Redskins” offensive. Almost 90 percent said it did not bother them.

 

But the Indian activist Suzan Shown Harjo, who has filed a lawsuit seeking to strip the “Redskins” trademark from the football team, said the poll neglected to ask some crucial questions.

 

“Are you a tribal person? What is your nation? What is your tribe? Would you say you are culturally or socially or politically native?” Harjo asked. Those without such connections cannot represent native opinions, she said.

 

Indian support for the name “is really a classic case of internalized oppression,” Harjo said. “People taking on what has been said about them, how they have been described, to such an extent that they don’t even notice.”

 

Harjo declines to estimate what percentage of native people oppose the name. But she notes that the many organizations supporting her lawsuit include the Cherokee, Comanche, Oneida and Seminole tribes, as well as the National Congress of American Indians, the largest intertribal organization, which represents more than 250 groups with a combined enrollment of 1.2 million.

 

“The ‘Redskins’ trademark is disparaging to Native Americans and perpetuates a centuries-old stereotype of Native Americans as ‘blood-thirsty savages,’ ‘noble warriors’ and an ethnic group ‘frozen in history,'” the National Congress said in a brief filed in the lawsuit.

 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says the term is “very offensive and should be avoided.” But like another infamous racial epithet, the N-word, it has been redefined by some native people as a term of familiarity or endearment, often in abbreviated form, according to Meland, the Indian professor.

 

“Of course, it is one thing for one ‘skin to call another ‘skin a ‘skin, but it has entirely different meaning when a non-Indian uses it,” Meland said in an email interview.

 

It was a white man who applied it to this particular football team: Owner George Preston Marshall chose the name in 1932 partly to honor the head coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, who was known as an Indian.

 

“The Washington Redskins name has thus from its origin represented a positive meaning distinct from any disparagement that could be viewed in some other context,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in June to 10 members of Congress who challenged the name.

 

Marshall, however, had a reputation as a racist. He was the last NFL owner who refused to sign black players — the federal government forced him to integrate in 1962 by threatening to cancel the lease on his stadium. When he died in 1969, his will created a Redskins Foundation but stipulated that it never support “the principle of racial integration in any form.”

 

And Dietz, the namesake Redskin, may not have even been a real Indian. Dietz served jail time for charges that he falsely registered for the draft as an Indian in order to avoid service. According to an investigation by the Indian Country Today newspaper, he stole the identity of a missing Oglala Sioux man.

 

Now, 81 years into this jumbled identity tale, the saga seems to finally be coming to a head. The NFL’s tone has shifted over the last few months, from defiance to conciliation.

 

“If we are offending one person,” Goodell, the NFL commissioner, said last month, “we need to be listening.”

[Balta1701]

Serious question, do you have a link to this supposed percentage? I hear people saying that all the time, but nobody ever provides evidence. You have the same dozen or so groups that speak out about it, so of course you hear them. I know I have read stories where some Indian leaders have said pretty much that they don't give a s*** about the name one way or the other, but can't remember where I saw them. I will try and look for them.

You're also right, there are people who don't give a s***. What you need to find instead is the strong supporters who aren't white males. Something tells me those will be more rare.

[southsider2k5]

You don't get to decide whether a group targeted by a racial slur gets to find it "cute and funny" and whether or not it matters if they're subjected to racial slurs and stereotypes. Members of that group do.

 

So which argument are you actually making here? That there are more important issues, or that this isn't even a racial slur in the first place and there's no reason to change it?

 

Do I need to boil it back to to meme form to keep it simple? I know what I am saying can't be captioned in a picture. That isn't my goal here.

 

[RockRaines]

This is being vastly over-complicated.

 

Redskin was, for a few hundred years, and still is, a racist insult. Just like "the N word". And, just like that word, the name was more flippantly and callously applied some time ago. So we have a football team with that name.

 

The people who are targets of it - as well as people who feel that they've gotten a pretty s***ty shaft already from this country - are offended. Lots of them. In fact from what I've read, just about every AmerInd person or leader that's been asked is offended.

 

To me, that is plenty enough to make a change. An insulting, racist name that offends most of a group? Change it.

 

Finally, as for the whole "PC Police" argument, that always cracks me up. What you are seeing here - people putting pressure on a business to make a positive change - is a great and quite American thing. It's cool to watch, and it symbolizes one of the positives of both capitalism and free speech.

 

I hope the name changes, and I think it will, probably pretty soon. Really at this point it's just the owner (who has been shown to be quite the model citizen) holding out, and I think he eventually caves to that economic pressure. That will be a good day.

Calling someone a redskin is like calling someone a carpetbagger, its an antiquated slur that doesnt mean much anymore IMO.

[Jenksismyhero]

Racial slurs targeted at disenfranchised minorities, especially those with the history of that word, no. Certainly not within "40-50 years," which is still within living memory of many people who had to literally risk their lives in order to get their basic civil liberties.

 

If you're going to argue that there are bigger issues facing the AmerIndian community (there are! literally no one on this planet would disagree!), you can't argue that it's also okay to continue using racial slurs and caricatures targeted at them because they may not be used as frequently anymore (except every time they are used to depict an AmerIndian as the NFL team's logo!)

 

Ok, fine, put it at 80 years. The point is if it's no longer being used for that reason, it's lost that connotation. I don't see a problem using it when that's the case. No one uses "redskins" anymore and hasn't for a very long time.

 

 

[EvilMonkey]

There are multiple AmerIndian groups that have worked to get the name changed. Why is that not sufficient to stop using a racial slur? Why is it so important to some to continue to use racial slurs?

As you are so fond of saying, 'links please'.

[Jenksismyhero]

Weird, I thought I explicitly said already that I can't because I'm not the target of it? Oh, wait, I did!

 

 

It might. What if a plurality do? What if a substantial minority do?

 

But you keep saying it's offensive. How do you know if you're not part of the group?

[Jenksismyhero]

There are multiple AmerIndian groups that have worked to get the name changed. Why is that not sufficient to stop using a racial slur? Why is it so important to some to continue to use racial slurs?

 

There are a lot of interest groups promoting a lot of things. That doesn't mean they speak for the majority of their respective groups.

[StrangeSox]

Do I need to boil it back to to meme form to keep it simple? I know what I am saying can't be captioned in a picture. That isn't my goal here.

I think you need to get around to explaining why it's good to keep using a racial slur.

[StrangeSox]

But you keep saying it's offensive. How do you know if you're not part of the group?

sorry for the brevity, insert "because AmerIndians believe it is offensive" after every time I said it's offensive.

[southsider2k5]

I think you need to get around to explaining why it's good to keep using a racial slur.

 

You'll just move the goalposts like you have this entire thread to reframe the argument into something else.

 

Explain

Outrage

Explain

Outrage

 

I think we covered all of that already.

[StrangeSox]

As you are so fond of saying, 'links please'.

http://www.fox23.com/news/news/native-amer...e-change/nggN8/

 

The Greater Tulsa Area Indian Affairs Commission has representatives from the Cherokee, Osage and Muscogee Creek tribes as well as many Native American organizations that operate in Tulsa County. The commission consists of 5 city of Tulsa appointees and three others appointed by Tulsa County. - See more at: http://www.fox23.com/news/news/native-amer...h.stlTs7nS.dpuf

[NorthSideSox72]

All good points. One thing I will point out is, last I heard, I thought the fan base was fairly outspokenly in favor of what the owner was doing in support of the name. That said, I am not arguing for keeping, but agree with the concept if everyone in a certain race is offended by it (that said, I have never seen an actual poll other then from people involved in the primary groups that have been protesting this for years), it isn't a good idea. I do think their is a difference between the use of Redskin and a term like the Tribe for the Indians or names like the Braves or Seminoles. Those are not derogatory in nature, imo.

 

Note: I'm specifically talking names, not mascots, etc.

 

Oh I agree, I don't see how the names Indians or Blackhawks are offensive because they are not insults on their face. They are proper names. Totally different.

 

Serious question, do you have a link to this supposed percentage? I hear people saying that all the time, but nobody ever provides evidence. You have the same dozen or so groups that speak out about it, so of course you hear them. I know I have read stories where some Indian leaders have said pretty much that they don't give a s*** about the name one way or the other, but can't remember where I saw them. I will try and look for them.

I do not. And frankly I don't care if it is 30% or 80% or whatever. It isn't zero or particularly close to zero, if they are all these groups and leaders and individuals being interviewed saying it offends them, and that's really all I need (from my perspective).

 

As for someone who I think earlier tried to argue it wasn't an insult like the N word, and if it was there would be more response... that's just math. People who are classified as AmerInd, even if using quarter blood rule, have a population that is orders of magnitude smaller than those of African descent in this country. Not to mention that many live on reservations, away from places media typically operate. So of course the voices are not as loud.

 

The term is an insult, always has been. Not sure what there is to even argue there. The only argument, to me, is whether or not the team should change it's name as a result of that fact. I don't think the government should do that, by the way. But I am definitely supportive of the individuals pressuring the team to do so.

 

 

[T R U]

Ive still never heard anyone use the term Redskin when referring to an Indian outside of the Washington Redskins. And I am a pretty offensive and incentive person and hang out with such.

[Quin]

Would any of the following be ok?

 

Coons, Spics, Chaptas, Chinks, Gooks, Mayates, and Mojados.

[StrangeSox]

You'll just move the goalposts like you have this entire thread to reframe the argument into something else.

 

Explain

Outrage

Explain

Outrage

 

I think we covered all of that already.

 

You're using terms like "goalposts" and "meme," but I'm not sure you know what they actually mean.

 

I've been pretty consistent in asking you to explain why it's okay to keep using a racial slur. I've also consistently asked you to explain why stopping using that racial slur is worse for AmerIndian causes than continuing to use it. You've done nothing but hand-waive that away and insist that not using racial slurs is akin to censorship, and that really nobody should find them offensive in the first place. What you've continually failed to actually address are the original goal posts.

 

Regardless of your insistence that they shouldn't, substantial numbers of AmerIndians find the continued use of this racial slur offensive. Now, complete the following sentence: "Nevertheless, Dan Snyder should continue to use a racial slur as his team's name because ____________." That's the original goalpost, and you keep trying to talk about other things.

[RockRaines]

Would any of the following be ok?

 

Coons, Spics, Chaptas, Chinks, Gooks, Mayates, and Mojados.

I call my wife a Dago all the time.