Washington's NFL team's name should be changed

Yeah... everyone has been talking about it for decades. :lol:

Funny how P.King and B.Costas were not mentioning it... they are now.

You can find something offensive about just about anything.

Do the All Blacks worry over offending people?
 
What do you mean?

It is just a word after all.
 
Uh. Wow. All Blacks is a descriptor of the colour the New Zealand national rugby union team wear. Redskins is an ethnic slur used as a mascot. You can't possibly need that explained to you.
 
If you see me would you describe me as a white guy if I was one?

Would that offend me? Would you say that black guy if you described someone that was African American? Would that offend?

A bunch of fuss over nothing IMO. Snyder can basically do what he wants regarding the name.
 
You might consider it a ethnic slur... many do not and have not for a long time.
 
Arwon said:
What on earth gives you that idea?

At the end of the day a significant enough group of people find it derogatory that the Patent Office revoked their trademark. That should tell us something.
Click to expand...

I got the idea from the same article you linked to! You're just listing organizations that oppose the name, and of course there are plenty of organizations that only represent fringe groups opposed to everything under the sun. What do actual American Indian individuals think about the name?

The answer:

same article said:
In a study performed in 2004 by the National Annenberg Election Survey, Native Americans from the 48 continental U.S. states were asked "The professional football team in Washington calls itself the Washington Redskins. As a Native American, do you find that name offensive or doesn't it bother you?" In response, ninety percent replied that the name did not bother them, while nine percent said that it was offensive, and one percent would not answer.[2][121]
Click to expand...

It seems that the overwhelming majority of American Indians have other stuff to worry about other than entirely harmless and well established team names.

Edit: Another interesting point is that I've talked to many American Indians, from Oklahoma to New Mexico, and every single one of them preferred the term "Indian" to the PC term "Native American", invented by white anthropologists / sociologists.
 
dgfred said:
Yeah... everyone has been talking about it for decades. :lol:

Funny how P.King and B.Costas were not mentioning it... they are now.
Click to expand...

Got it...you only know what's going on if Peter King or Bob Costas tells you. That doesn't change the fact that this issue has been in litigation for decades, so your assertion that it became offensive 'all of a sudden' is clearly unsupported.
 
No need to be an arse... I was mentioning that they haven't talked about all the time they have been in sports reporting. Just now it is very offensive to them.

Offensive to a few for many years... not offensive to most for many years.
 
Arwon said:
"Not bothered" is a pretty weaselly survey term. I wouldn't put much stock in that when there's a slew of actual organisations and groups making their opinions known.

Especially when more recent and thorough research shows starkly different results - http://cips.csusb.edu/docs/PressRelease.pdf
Click to expand...

Well if they're not bothered why bother changing the name?

As for organizations, as I said, I don't have much faith that they represent majority opinion. I much prefer polls for that. We've been told by decades by those organizations and associated academics that we should refer to Indians as Native Americans, but it just so happens that vast majority of Indian individuals prefer the term Indian.

Edit: and I have a problem with the methodology of the study you linked to. What's a "verified Indian"? What criteria are they using? Blood quotas, tribal enrollment, what? Self-identification to a certain ethnic/cultural group is the only way that doesn't smell of Nazism to me, and it's precisely the one the authors object to.
 
They used tribal enrollment.

Plenty of people *are* bothered and plenty of people who aren't *personally* "bothered" still recognise that it's really inappropriate.

I really don't understand why people want to go into bat for this in the face of clearly and strongly expressed views of those in the best position to make a judgement on it.
 
Arwon said:
They used tribal enrollment.

Plenty of people *are* bothered and plenty of people who aren't *personally* "bothered" still recognise that it's really inappropriate.

I really don't understand why people want to go into bat for this in the face of clearly and strongly expressed views of those in the best position to make a judgement on it.
Click to expand...

If it was something that really bothered a lot of people then sure, go ahead and change it. But apparently it doesn't bother the vast majority of American Indian individuals, and the team supporters (for some reason, personally I wouldn't care) seem to feel very strongly about keeping it. So again, why bother?

A small minority will always be offended anyway, and I'm sure there are organizations out there who want to change the name of the country itself (in France some organizations argue that the Marseillaise is offensive and ought to be replaced...).
 
Actually thinking about it I'm not sure that "we're only insulting ten percent of them with our demeaning cartoon mascot and slur name" is actually even a defence even if it were true which it clearly ain't.
 
Arwon said:
Actually thinking about it I'm not sure that "we're only insulting ten percent of them with our demeaning cartoon mascot and slur name" is actually even a defence even if it were true which it clearly ain't.
Click to expand...

I think it's a solid defense. 10% is actually an extremely low percentage if you think about it. After all the key here is who gets to say that the name is an ethnic slur and the mascot is demeaning.

My guess is that the name will be changed eventually, not because opposition to it will increase, but simply because supporters will cease caring that much.
 
dgfred said:
No need to be an arse... I was mentioning that they haven't talked about all the time they have been in sports reporting. Just now it is very offensive to them.

Offensive to a few for many years... not offensive to most for many years.
Click to expand...

Fair enough.

That actually is pretty typical of sports reporters. The ones who didn't find their way into journalism via their own athletic careers generally got there by being at or near the bottom of their class in journalism school. When some circumstance causes their path to intersect with 'real' news they invariably overblow it into an attempted Pulitzer run.

As to 'offensive to a few'...if you look into the formations of the representative councils involved in the case they are among the better demonstrations of democracy that you will find.
 
Redskins has been pretty overtly offensive for a while. It's always been a curiosity, a "can they really name something that? that seems a bit wrong", at least among the various sports forums & sports fans I've interacted with.
 
For what it's worth, American college programs have been phasing out native-american themed names over the last several years, unless they get explicit permission from certain tribes. I think it's pretty clear that the name ought to be changed, especially since the Washington football team has a pretty complicated and ugly racial history independent of this event (so they ought to err on the side of caution), but their owner is a pretty terrible human being...so here we are.
 
downtown said:
For what it's worth, American college programs have been phasing out native-american themed names over the last several years, unless they get explicit permission from certain tribes. I think it's pretty clear that the name ought to be changed, especially since the Washington football team has a pretty complicated and ugly racial history independent of this event (so they ought to err on the side of caution), but their owner is a pretty terrible human being...so here we are.
Click to expand...
Can you elaborate on this history a little? I'm curious.
 
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