Don Quixote
Footballguy
They could bring back the name of the old soccer team in DC, "Team America."
America, **** yeah!
America, **** yeah!
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Do you think Snyder should change the name of the Redskins? (3 Viewers)
- Thread starter DBIsports
- Start date
Todem
Footballguy
OMG.... get outta here....too much sensitivity for me. Our country is really getting stupid. I am Jewish. We are called Jewish people. Black people are commonly called called Afro Americans. Indians are commonly referred to as Native Americans. It was what we were taught in public school.
For the love of God and all that is holy. Oh wait better not mention God for I may offend an atheist.
I guess Native Americans want nothing to do with being grouped into a race of people (even though they are a particular type of race of people just like I am just like African Americans are, just like Asian Americans are etc etc etc) and want nothing to do with being a sports team name unless it is a tribe (ala Seminoles).
Well I am sure they are going after the Cleveland Indians then correct? It's not stopping at the Redskins. The Indians logo...ooof!!!
So why doesn't Snyder use a tribe name to keep the spirit of the theme intact. There has to be an amicable compromise/solution to not offend Native Americans. And move forward here.
Arsenal of Doom
Footballguy
Red Tails is a fantastic name choice. The team could even put together a squad of P51s to do flyovers for the home games. It would be all kinds of awesome.
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
Rich Conway
Footballguy
I still say Washington Lobbyists has a nice ring to it.
Fennis
Footballguy
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Yankee23Fan
Fair Tax!
How about the RedTape?
I never get the peal all at once.To be correct, it has to be at least 2 potatoes.at keep name, change logo to a potato.
CBusAlex
Footballguy
Well, OK then. As long as it was taught in school, it must be correct.
But, if you really thought about it - Jews share a commonality that ties them together, Americans share a country. What do "Indians" or "Native Americans" share?
(And really - most evidence suggests they were not native to the land, but migrated like everyone else - so neither the terms "Indians" nor "Native Americans" are really correct - just a lazy way of referring to people who were not euro-centric.
TheIronSheik
SUPER ELITE UPPER TIER
Todem
Footballguy
So I guess the entire public school curriculum on racial matters is still backwards to this day as it is still being taught in every public school across the entire nation.Sinn Fein said:
SMH on the other bolded part.
Whatever.
So what are they then. What can we call this particular race of human beings for description purposes...can we say Indians? Can we just change the name of The Washington Redskins to the Washington Indians. Or is that too offensive too?
Will that get everyone to sing kum-ba-yah and be happy?
This is getting ridiculous already. I am totally appreciative to the fact that Redskins is offensive. Because yes it would be to me if I were an Indian. It is a racial description. Just like colored, **** etc.
But what is acceptable to the Indian race? Not being used as part of a logo, name of a team period? If so....then for the love of god why can't Snyder just move on and figure out a brand name change in the name of progress?
Can't the NFL squeeze this? Can't MLB squeeze this? I mean the NBA was able to force a sale of an NBA team on the basis of a private conversation unknowingly being taped by a woman who has a police rap sheet as well. Sterling is a scum bag and a racist....we all know this...but the NBA just booted him to the curb in a matter of a NY minute yet the NFL and MLB can't sort out some racial naming issues?
Holy crap!!!
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Fennis
Footballguy
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/jul/02/for-wellpinit-students-redskins-a-source-of-pride/
For Wellpinit students, ‘Redskins’ a source of pride, tradition
WELLPINIT, Wash. – This town of 928 – with its one grocery store, one gas station and one stop sign – is far, far away from the national controversies of the day.
To get here, you drive about an hour north of Spokane, past fields of barley, wheat and canola with yellow flowers, past the forests.
It is home for the Spokane Tribe of Indians, and for 107 years, the Wellpinit High School mascot name has been Redskins.
Wellpinit doesn’t particularly want to be a part of stories about its mascot.
But the tribe gets calls because of the controversy 2,600 miles away in Washington, D.C., with the Redskins NFL team.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office last month canceled the team’s trademark registration, deeming the name disparaging to Native Americans. Various media outlets around the country, including the Seattle Times, have stopped using the name, except in stories about the controversy, because it is offensive.
In its defense, the Washington football team in 2013 linked to a list of 70 high schools using the Redskins name and later specifically referred to Wellpinit.
“One thing that annoys me,” said John Teters, registrar for the school district, “is that we’re used as an excuse for this asinine process. You name it, Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, whenever those names come up, the school gets called. ‘If you guys can do it, why can’t we?’ We’re somehow used as a justification.”
The school district isn’t in a big hurry to change the name and sees no big push for it.
The high school is the only one in this state using that name.
Last year, the Port Townsend School Board voted to abolish Redskins as its high school’s mascot. They’re now the Redhawks.
A list of school mascot names in this state, compiled by Marc Sheehan, a Federal Way teacher, shows a few Indians and Chiefs – also not appreciated by Native Americans – but mostly a lot of names along the lines of Eagles and Mustangs.
Michael Seyler has been on the Wellpinit School Board for 19 years. He said there might be a community meeting sometime to discuss the name, and maybe a vote, but nothing is scheduled.
“Casual interest” is how Seyler describes community concern about that “back East” controversy.
Take Clarence Le Bret, who at 90 says he’s the oldest male tribal member in town.
Controversy? What controversy, he said. “It’s the traditional name we always had.”
Le Bret said he helped raise five boys and two girls and would go to all the school sports games in which they played.
“After that I was sported out,” he said, and doesn’t much care about the NFL or any other team.
But with many here, the team-mascot name means a lot.
Here, the kids have their “Wellpinit Redskins” T-shirts and sweatshirts they wear to games or Spirit Week. At games, they chant, “Redskin Power!”
“It’s not a negative name for us,” said Kyra Antone, 17, who’s going into 12th grade and is wearing one of the Redskins T-shirts. “Whenever I think of Redskins, I think of pride in our sports teams. There’s nothing wrong with being a 17-year-old Native American.”
How to react to the national news does seem to break down along generational lines.
“We don’t see it as a derogatory name. But if you ask a grandpa or grandma, they think of it differently,” said Brodie Ford, 17, who just graduated and is heading to Whitworth University.
Ford said that in sports, when playing other schools, he didn’t hear “Redskins” used in a derogatory way.
But older tribal members sure do remember insults about their heritage, although it wasn’t the Redskins name that was used.
James Seyler, 46, from the high school’s class of 1986, who works for the tribe’s historic-preservation program, remembers his basketball days.
When playing at other schools, Wellpinit players were called derogatory names.
On a recent afternoon, on the school football field, Seyler is showing a couple of teens the techniques for building a tepee with 17 lodge poles for an upcoming contest.
Seyler wants to keep the mascot name.
“We shouldn’t change it because everybody in politics wants us to change the name,” he said. “We’ve been here for thousands for years. It’s people who weren’t raised here who are bothered by it.”
Still, for a number of Native Americans, the Redskins name is an insult that strikes at their emotions.
“This country was founded on bounties. I grew up with my dad talking about the genocide of Indians,” said Chet Bluff, 53. “This should be in the history books.”
Bluff said she was taught that “Redskin” refers to the bloodied scalp that bounty hunters used to show proof of a kill.
She said she told a white co-worker who asked what the “Redskin” controversy was about:
“Imagine my husband, my dad, my brother and granddaughter being killed and skinned for $800. Her jaw dropped,” Bluff said.
That the term is derived from the blood from the scalp of a Native American is in dispute, as is often the case with what is and isn’t historically provable.
Ives Goddard, emeritus senior linguist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology, in 2005 wrote a research paper on the term.
He said the assertion became popularized when American Indian rights activist Suzan Harjo said it on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1992.
“There wasn’t anything to support the connection,” Goddard said. “But that’s what everybody now thinks.”
In fact, he said, it was Indians who first came up with the term when the whites showed up in this continent: “You guys are white, we are red.” It became derogatory in later usage, he said.
And, Goddard added, what’s acceptable “is based on today’s language,” and the term is clearly offensive to many.
Meanwhile, life ambles on in this quiet town.
Brodie Ford’s family is justifiably proud that he earned a full-ride college Gates Millennium scholarship.
He had to write six essays in his application.
In one essay, Ford told about his upbringing:
“When I was eight years old my dad began taking me to his farms, and for every day of the summer, I was down at the farms with my dad. He put me in his lap, and showed me how every single instrument on the tractor worked. To this very day, I remember everything that he taught me. During those hot, dry summer days, I learned how to ride a horse, drive a tractor, bail hay, and how to catch and tag a buffalo.”
In another essay, he concluded, “I’m just a kid from a rural reservation who wants to make a difference.”
Let the East Coast fester in the Redskins name controversy.
“I use the name proudly,” Ford said. “I wear it with respect.”
For Wellpinit students, ‘Redskins’ a source of pride, tradition
WELLPINIT, Wash. – This town of 928 – with its one grocery store, one gas station and one stop sign – is far, far away from the national controversies of the day.
To get here, you drive about an hour north of Spokane, past fields of barley, wheat and canola with yellow flowers, past the forests.
It is home for the Spokane Tribe of Indians, and for 107 years, the Wellpinit High School mascot name has been Redskins.
Wellpinit doesn’t particularly want to be a part of stories about its mascot.
But the tribe gets calls because of the controversy 2,600 miles away in Washington, D.C., with the Redskins NFL team.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office last month canceled the team’s trademark registration, deeming the name disparaging to Native Americans. Various media outlets around the country, including the Seattle Times, have stopped using the name, except in stories about the controversy, because it is offensive.
In its defense, the Washington football team in 2013 linked to a list of 70 high schools using the Redskins name and later specifically referred to Wellpinit.
“One thing that annoys me,” said John Teters, registrar for the school district, “is that we’re used as an excuse for this asinine process. You name it, Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, whenever those names come up, the school gets called. ‘If you guys can do it, why can’t we?’ We’re somehow used as a justification.”
The school district isn’t in a big hurry to change the name and sees no big push for it.
The high school is the only one in this state using that name.
Last year, the Port Townsend School Board voted to abolish Redskins as its high school’s mascot. They’re now the Redhawks.
A list of school mascot names in this state, compiled by Marc Sheehan, a Federal Way teacher, shows a few Indians and Chiefs – also not appreciated by Native Americans – but mostly a lot of names along the lines of Eagles and Mustangs.
Michael Seyler has been on the Wellpinit School Board for 19 years. He said there might be a community meeting sometime to discuss the name, and maybe a vote, but nothing is scheduled.
“Casual interest” is how Seyler describes community concern about that “back East” controversy.
Take Clarence Le Bret, who at 90 says he’s the oldest male tribal member in town.
Controversy? What controversy, he said. “It’s the traditional name we always had.”
Le Bret said he helped raise five boys and two girls and would go to all the school sports games in which they played.
“After that I was sported out,” he said, and doesn’t much care about the NFL or any other team.
But with many here, the team-mascot name means a lot.
Here, the kids have their “Wellpinit Redskins” T-shirts and sweatshirts they wear to games or Spirit Week. At games, they chant, “Redskin Power!”
“It’s not a negative name for us,” said Kyra Antone, 17, who’s going into 12th grade and is wearing one of the Redskins T-shirts. “Whenever I think of Redskins, I think of pride in our sports teams. There’s nothing wrong with being a 17-year-old Native American.”
How to react to the national news does seem to break down along generational lines.
“We don’t see it as a derogatory name. But if you ask a grandpa or grandma, they think of it differently,” said Brodie Ford, 17, who just graduated and is heading to Whitworth University.
Ford said that in sports, when playing other schools, he didn’t hear “Redskins” used in a derogatory way.
But older tribal members sure do remember insults about their heritage, although it wasn’t the Redskins name that was used.
James Seyler, 46, from the high school’s class of 1986, who works for the tribe’s historic-preservation program, remembers his basketball days.
When playing at other schools, Wellpinit players were called derogatory names.
On a recent afternoon, on the school football field, Seyler is showing a couple of teens the techniques for building a tepee with 17 lodge poles for an upcoming contest.
Seyler wants to keep the mascot name.
“We shouldn’t change it because everybody in politics wants us to change the name,” he said. “We’ve been here for thousands for years. It’s people who weren’t raised here who are bothered by it.”
Still, for a number of Native Americans, the Redskins name is an insult that strikes at their emotions.
“This country was founded on bounties. I grew up with my dad talking about the genocide of Indians,” said Chet Bluff, 53. “This should be in the history books.”
Bluff said she was taught that “Redskin” refers to the bloodied scalp that bounty hunters used to show proof of a kill.
She said she told a white co-worker who asked what the “Redskin” controversy was about:
“Imagine my husband, my dad, my brother and granddaughter being killed and skinned for $800. Her jaw dropped,” Bluff said.
That the term is derived from the blood from the scalp of a Native American is in dispute, as is often the case with what is and isn’t historically provable.
Ives Goddard, emeritus senior linguist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology, in 2005 wrote a research paper on the term.
He said the assertion became popularized when American Indian rights activist Suzan Harjo said it on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1992.
“There wasn’t anything to support the connection,” Goddard said. “But that’s what everybody now thinks.”
In fact, he said, it was Indians who first came up with the term when the whites showed up in this continent: “You guys are white, we are red.” It became derogatory in later usage, he said.
And, Goddard added, what’s acceptable “is based on today’s language,” and the term is clearly offensive to many.
Meanwhile, life ambles on in this quiet town.
Brodie Ford’s family is justifiably proud that he earned a full-ride college Gates Millennium scholarship.
He had to write six essays in his application.
In one essay, Ford told about his upbringing:
“When I was eight years old my dad began taking me to his farms, and for every day of the summer, I was down at the farms with my dad. He put me in his lap, and showed me how every single instrument on the tractor worked. To this very day, I remember everything that he taught me. During those hot, dry summer days, I learned how to ride a horse, drive a tractor, bail hay, and how to catch and tag a buffalo.”
In another essay, he concluded, “I’m just a kid from a rural reservation who wants to make a difference.”
Let the East Coast fester in the Redskins name controversy.
“I use the name proudly,” Ford said. “I wear it with respect.”
TheIronSheik
SUPER ELITE UPPER TIER
This kind of goes back to my point. These kids have turned this name into something to be proud of.
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
Sure, and most people are OK with that But it's because it's up to them to make that determination and use it that way, not others.
And in any event this only works if it's self-applied. If a minority chooses to co-opt a word that's arguably a slur as a source of pride that doesn't mean it's suddenly OK for the majority to start using it in any context.
Parrothead
Footballguy
Chaka
Footballguy
And nobody is just starting to be offended by it. People have been offended by it for a long time.Redskins is in use- nobody is just starting to use it
Parrothead
Footballguy
except for the people who aren'tAnd nobody is just starting to be offended by it. People have been offended by it for a long time.Redskins is in use- nobody is just starting to use it
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
Doesn't really change things. Point is that minorities sometimes use slurs in ways designed to show pride or rob them of their negative connotation, but that doesn't magically make it OK for everyone to use the word. There's a bunch of examples, of course.Redskins is in use- nobody is just starting to use it
Bottomfeeder Sports
Footballguy
SWC
Bromigo
hey sheik how can you be so down on dsp for being racist against you and then be so for this nickname it is the same thing just to another group of people i think you are all right but i think you are one being a hipocrate and two wrong about this one it is a horrible name and please think this one through take that to the bank fellow bromerican
Das Boot
Footballguy
Sebowski
Footballguy
Sebowski
Footballguy
Remember when it was racist to say "black"? Then people realized it was stupid to call black Canadians "African Americans" now it's ok to say black again? Or did that just happen to me? (that Canadian in college was PISSED at me)
Words themselves aren't inherently anything (Lenny Bruce<hey). They're what our evolving society makes them. Start telling enough people something is something, and if they don't really care one way or another they'll just go along with you. And then they'll go along their way. That's just easy, and we like easy. Or, just dig your heels in one way or the other because you like to fight. Admit it. You love it. That's what makes you (the royal "you", not anyone in particular) post so many arguments in threads or even make arguments your profession. Fine. I hear that is a worthwhile thing to do. Just don't pretend you are absolute on anything. It's offensive.
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Well then people should have just reminded Canadians that they are really "Americans" and should just get over it.
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
SaintsInDome2006
Footballguy
Just saw this in the morning paper. I guess he really should have seen that coming, and generally companies that create artificial social media can never do it right anyway, just seems to make their case more false.
MC Gas Money
Footballguy
I think the team should be more concerned with changing their quarterback.......but if they do change their name they should just let the fans in DC vote on it. Its been done in other sports and would be great PR for them to get the fans involved
Henry Ford
Footballguy
I guess they didn't follow the link I put in this thread to the evidence used in the tribunal. The court had dozens and dozens that were sent directly to the Redskins in the 90s.
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RUSF18
Footballguy
Henry Ford
Footballguy
"Dear Government..."
RUSF18
Footballguy
...You'll never believe what I'm about to tell you, but I swear this is actually true."
MattFancy
Footballguy
Dozens? So we're going to change something because dozens of people don't agree with it? Holy crap can you imagine if we did this with other things in this country?
RUSF18
Footballguy
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
Are we really gonna go into this nonsense again? Lots and lots people object to it. It's well documented. The tribes, groups and prominent individuals are catalogued on the Wikipedia page that's been linked like ten times in this thread.
You wanna argue that lots of other people don't mind it and that somehow makes it OK to to offend the others who don't like it, fine, we can agree to disagree. But you can't argue that it's just a small handful of people or Native Americans opposed to it. That's silly and has been refuted over and over again here and elsewhere.
MattFancy
Footballguy
But how much is enough to enact change? I've always said if the majority of NAs are offended, then by all means, change it. But from the numbers I've seen, it doesn't sound like more than 30% are offended by it. Is that enough to make a change? I don't know.
Lol there were dozens of people that believed Obama wasn't born in this country. Does that mean he isn't?
Don Quixote
Footballguy
I found the story on the FOIA request. It was a request for letters to the USPTO, which would be weird to send in the first place. It notes that no letters were received either way before the ruling. Consistent with the fact that sending letters to the USPTO would be weird, this was apparently sent after the ruling:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/1/redskins-name-drew-no-public-complaints-patent-off/?page=1
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
Right. There's plenty of room to argue about how many Native Americans truly don't like it, and whether that warrants a change. To me the number is pretty low, because the cost of changing it is so insignificant. It's the name of a sports team. Two NBA teams changed names in the last two years, pretty sure the world hasn't ended. In fact they both have significantly brighter futures than they did before the name changes. Maybe this is what our miserable franchise needs.
People can disagree with my conclusion and argue that the name is super important for some reason and that outweighs the negatives surrounding the name. That's a reasonable disagreement. But what they can't do is stick their head in the sand and pretend that nobody is really offended by or opposed to the name. Clearly there's a lot of people and Native Americans who are.
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roadkill1292
Footballguy
It's a subjective thing. A few Native Americans' wishes may not trump the wishes of the population at large but they certainly trump the wishes of thousands of dip#### Washington fans. You can't disappoint those people often enough for my liking.
MattFancy
Footballguy
Tobias, you and I agree on alot of different topics (especially UNC bball), but this one I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
Like you said, this is insignificant, so what does changing it really do? All of a sudden are the Native Americans going to stop suffering from poverty, alcoholism, gambling addiction, etc.? Doubtful. Are all these people that are crusading for a name change just going to forget about Native Americans if they finally get the Redskins to change their name? More than likely. Let's do more to help these people better their lives. There's been numerous NAs that have come out and say they see the name as an honor and tribute to their past. I just don't think changing the name of a sports team does anything for them when there are so many other things WE as a country can do for them.
Chaka
Footballguy
Well for starters it would stop regularly insulting them in public. That would be a good thing, right?
TobiasFunke
Footballguy
Arguing that we shouldn't do the right thing because there are much more important things to worry about is a fraudulent argument. You could make that argument in response to everyone who cares about everything, except maybe people trying to stop genocide or nuclear war or something.
Also, it's patronizing to tell the Native Americans who think it's slur and that its use dehumanizes them and tell them that there are bigger fish to fry so they just have to suck it up and deal with it. Silly Native Americans with their misplaced priorities, right! Clearly the white man knows what's good for them! Why don't they just let us use whatever words we want to refer to them and worry about their poverty and alcoholism first, right?
Seriously- Native American organizations have explained many times why they think this is important. You can read it here or here or in the PTO decision on the name or in lots of other places.
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