It doesn’t seem to make any sense to poll the public at large about whether “Redskins” is an offensive racial slur. Is it a big surprise that the majority of non-Native Americans think that the term is unoffensive? Non-Chinese people probably think it’s perfectly fine to run a restaurant called “Chink’s.” Is that how we decide whether something is offensive?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I was recently in the Utica area of Michigan and drove past a Chinese restaurant called, I shit you not, Takee Outee. How that business keeps going with that name, I do not understand. And you don’t have to be a genius to see how offensive that is.
My college alma mater is Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Our mascot was a Miami Indian, and the team was called the Redskins. The Miami tribe sanctioned that name and mascot until shortly after I graduated, and then petitioned that it be changed.
It caused an uproar, but the administration prevailed and a new mascot, the Redhawk, was voted by the students and alumni. No biggie. No one dropped out because of the change, as far as I know. They may have lost donations from disgruntled alumni, but they’re still doing just fine.
I hear squalling about being PC and how oversensitive we are these days, but I think the more we address racial slurs, the more likely we’ll be to stop using them as a divider among us.
What a sensible solution/resolution — “Redskins” changed to Redhawks. Ignoring everything else, redhawks even has a nicer ring to it than “redskins.”
Have you polled the local hawk community on that ?
I hear our local Redtail community is none too happy with what they regard as inordinate attention paid to their nether regions, ignoring their magnificent wingspan, bold beak, and terrific talons.
Used to be a national chain of coffee shop restaurants in the US called Sambo’s. Saw them about everywhere we traveled in the west as a kid in the 60s and 70s.
I think public pressure over the offensive name finally brought down the chain, but they seemed to be around a surprisingly long time.
Then there was the prominent 3-name fancy American historian who used the Sambo term in his widely-used textbooks back in the mid-century. A liberal, someone you’d think would be more sensitive to these things. Took him a while to finally get it, and agree to get the term out of his book.
I also had a Takee Outee restaurant in my town during my childhood as well. I’m old, though. Haven’t see one ’round these parts lately.
What I always say is that if you can’t use the term in a normal conversation with a person of the affected ethnicity without feeling really embarrassed, it’s probably offensive. Not hard, really.
Yeah, and I read that a recent poll showed that most white people thought that Ferguson got too much media coverage.
Sure.
One of the privileges of being privileged is being able to ignore privilege.
Do we have ask SquirePattonBoggs before insisting that the name be changed to the Washington Lobbyists?
Doh! you beat me to it!
That’s an even more offensive name!
Jeebus, you know something must be up with this owner that he insists on remaining stuck in this tar pit. Most bizness owners try to get the hell out of these fixes. I guess he feels he has the DC media and community on his side.
But really, there are so many possibilities for a DC pro-sports franchise: The Washington Lobbyists; the Beltwayers; the Memorials; the Potomacs. How about the Washington Bureaucrats or the Filibusters or the Gridlockers?
The Washington “Redskins” of all things, really? Embrace your town!
What actually happened is that over the last decade, he bought the DC media either outright, or through denial of access to the Football team so they were generally in his pocket until the name issue began to become widely known.
http://deadspin.com/how-dan-snyder-bought-off-the-d-c-media-1616238720
Let them keep the name – change the mascot…
I suppose “Chink” might be somebody’s nickname.
“Is that how we decide whether something is offensive?”
Yes, apparently.
Dozens of States decided that majority vote could and should take away minority rights on gay marriage, affirmative action, and many other issues. That’s of much greater consequence than a poll about the name of a football team.
That said, I’m kind of happy that the NFL is allowing this to be yet another cultural and moral millstone around its neck. It allows me to wallow in my hatred for the League in a pure and unchallenged way. Only FIFA and the NCAA are more reprehensible sports organizations, and that’s a close call for me.
I’ve started to see ads around here featuring various Native Americans saying the name is not offensive to them and that it even makes them proud. The ad proudly proclaims that it was paid for by “RedskinsFacts.”