Can you elaborate on this history a little? I'm curious.
Which part? The phasing out or the racist legacy of the Washington Football team?
For the latter: essentially the Washington Football team was the absolute last to integrate, mostly because the owner at the time was a capital R Racist who didn't want black players on his team. (Fun fact: there remains to this day a fairly large Dallas Cowboys rooting interest in Washington specifically because black football fans felt alienated by Washington's racist doctrines and so took to rooting for the division rival Cowboys). Eventually US Congress had to pass a bill forcing the Washington team to integrate. A black star player from the Cleveland Browns was force-traded to Washington, if I recall correctly. This was in the mid-60s.
For the phasing out look no further than the Cleveland Indians. They first inaugurated their name in the mid-19teens after their star player, captain, manager, and team namesake Napoleon Lajoie retired from baseball. A city referendum picked "Indian" to be the club's new moniker. In the mid-20s or 30s the first iterations of the now-infamous "Chief Wahoo" were developed. This is an open and shut offensively racist image depicting a smiling stereotypical native American in redface makeup (big, red lips). The team has used this logo proudly for much of its history and was the logo going on the team's caps at least going back to the 60s. They also had the logo on the upper-left chest of their home jerseys
(like so):
It's their sleeve patch, and it's prominently featured in their stadium.
In the last 5-6 years we've seen a massive scaling back of Chief Wahoo. Luckily right now baseball is going through a stage where deadball era and pre-cold war era unis are very in so it was both logical and easy for the Indians organization to swap out the wahoo-caps with retro-deadball(ish) style caps with a simple block letter C on it. Gone are the wahoo-jerseys. The Indians have all but burned any evidence of them sticking around. The only place Chief Wahoo is to be found these days is as a shoulder patch. Those may well be gone soon.
The Indians fall into a similar-but-different boat as the Washington Football club. Unlike Washington, the Indians name is pretty unobjectionable. The problem is the logo, which is clearly derogatory and offensive. Because Wahoo and the name are linked in trademark, the Washington trademark ruling establishes a precedent which will almost certainly cost the Indians their trademark if it were to go to court. Of course it seems the Indians have been preparing for this over the last 6 or 7 years, so it will be a pretty easy fix for the team.
I doubt the Braves are at risk. Unlike Washington, the Braves actually have a legitimate claim to the "noble heritage" thing or whatever. The name is no different than calling yourself "The Spartans" or "The Trojans" or "The Warriors". The Braves eliminated most of their actual depictions of Native Americans awhile ago. They got the tomahawk on their logo, and I don't think anybody can really argue that its presence is disparaging. The only really bad thing about the Braves is that godawful tomahawk chop thing, but there's really not much anybody can do about that. Most people already hate it as it is, without having to throw in the rasism angle to it.
The Blackhawks should be fine too. The name comes from an actual person. Not really disparaging (actually, *literally* "honoring" nickname). Their problem is the logo, which portrays a stereotypical native American and was apparently a drawing done by the Blackhawks owner's wife as a portrait of the team's namesake. So I don't know if you can really argue that it's disparaging? I don't know. I'm still not entirely sure why Blackhawk's logo is bad but Washington's is ok. If someone would like to clear that up for me I'd love to hear it.
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. The chant that goes with it is even worse.
Thanks.
