Political Correctness About the Name “Redskins”

From ESPN:

Rick Reilly

I guess this is where I’m supposed to fall in line and do what every other American sports writer is doing. I’m supposed to swear I won’t ever write the words “Washington Redskins” anymore because it’s racist and offensive and a slap in the face to all Native Americans who ever lived. Maybe it is.

I just don’t quite know how to tell my father-in-law, a Blackfeet Indian. He owns a steak restaurant on the reservation near Browning, Mont. He has a hard time seeing the slap-in-the-face part.

“The whole issue is so silly to me,” says Bob Burns, my wife’s father and a bundle holder in the Blackfeet tribe. “The name just doesn’t bother me much. It’s an issue that shouldn’t be an issue, not with all the problems we’ve got in this country.”

And I definitely don’t know how I’ll tell the athletes at Wellpinit (Wash.) High School — where the student body is 91.2 percent Native American — that the “Redskins” name they wear proudly across their chests is insulting them. Because they have no idea.

“I’ve talked to our students, our parents and our community about this and nobody finds any offense at all in it,” says Tim Ames, the superintendent of Wellpinit schools. “‘Redskins’ is not an insult to our kids. ‘Wagon burners’ is an insult. ‘Prairie n-----s’ is an insult. Those are very upsetting to our kids. But ‘Redskins’ is an honorable name we wear with pride. … In fact, I’d like to see somebody come up here and try to change it.”

Boy, you try to help some people …

And it’s not going to be easy telling the Kingston (Okla.) High School (57.7 percent Native American) Redskins that the name they’ve worn on their uniforms for 104 years has been a joke on them this whole time. Because they wear it with honor.

“We have two great tribes here,” says Kingston assistant school superintendent Ron Whipkey, “the Chicasaw and the Choctaw. And not one member of those tribes has ever come to me or our school with a complaint. It is a prideful thing to them.”

“It’s a name that honors the people,” says Kingston English teacher Brett Hayes, who is Choctaw. “The word ‘Oklahoma’ itself is Choctaw for ‘red people.’ The students here don’t want it changed. To them, it seems like it’s just people who have no connection with the Native American culture, people out there trying to draw attention to themselves.

“My kids are really afraid we’re going to lose the Redskin name. They say to me, ‘They’re not going to take it from us, are they, Dad?’”

Too late. White America has spoken. You aren’t offended, so we’ll be offended for you.

Same story with the Red Mesa (Ariz.) High School Redskins. They wear the name with fierce pride. They absolutely don’t see it as an insult. But what do they know? The student body is only 99.3 percent Native American.

And even though an Annenberg Public Policy Center poll found that 90 percent of Native Americans were not offended by the Redskins name, and even though linguists say the “redskins” word was first used by Native Americans themselves, and even though nobody on the Blackfeet side of my wife’s family has ever had someone insult them with the word “redskin,” it doesn’t matter. There’s no stopping a wave of PC-ness when it gets rolling.

I mean, when media stars like USA Today’s Christine Brennan, a white woman from Ohio, and Peter King, a white man from Massachusetts, have jumped on a people’s cause, there’s no going back.

Besides, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last week that if “even one person is offended” on this issue, we need to “listen.”

One person?

Got it. Guess we need to listen to people who are offended by the Kansas City Chiefs’ name, too. That’s one that offends my father-in-law. “You see some little guy wearing a headdress made of chicken feathers,” he says, “painting his face up, making a mockery of us. I hate that. Those are things you earn.”

One person? I know an atheist who is offended by religious names like the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. There are people who who don’t think Ole Miss should be the Rebels. People who lost family to Hurricanes. There are people who think Wizards promotes paganism. Shall we listen to all of them?

I guess so.

Edmundo Macedo, vice president of ESPN’s Stats & Information group, told ESPN ombudsman Robert Lipsyte that the term Redskins is abhorrent. “We would not accept anything similar as a team nickname if it were associated with any other ethnicity or any other race,” Macedo said.

Oh, yes, we would.

In fact, ESPN and many other media companies cover the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves without a single searing search of their social conscience.

Doesn’t matter. The 81-year-old Washington Redskins name is falling, and everybody better get out of the way. For the majority of Native Americans who don’t care, we’ll care for them. For the Native Americans who haven’t asked for help, we’re glad to give it to them.

Trust us. We know what’s best. We’ll take this away for your own good, and put up barriers that protect you from ever being harmed again.

Kind of like a reservation.

Mukwonago Indians: Standing Up to the Politically Correct Bullies

Somebody finally had the courage to do it.

The Mukwonago School Board decided they would not cave in to the bullies in the State Department of Public Instruction and change the nickname of their sports team, which has been “Indians” since 1911.

Claiming that Indian team names somehow disparage Native Americans is a silly notion that only a politically correct person could accept. Remember, to be politically correct means you never ever question any claim made on behalf of a politically correct victim group, no matter how silly.

People name things to pay tribute. There is no Benedict Arnold National Airport across the river from Washington, rather it’s the Reagan National Airport.

There is no John Wilkes Booth High School in this nation, nor any Lee Harvey Oswald Parkway.

Even when an athletic team is named after some rather disreputable group (“Pirates”) the name reflects admiration of some desirable attribute the group supposedly has (being fierce fighters).

Even modest nicknames reflect pride. Being in the meat packing industry or the brewing business are pretty mundane, but both are matters of pride in (respectively) Green Bay and Milwaukee.

But the activists, and their knee-jerk supporters in liberal circles, insist that Indian nicknames are offensive.

But to Whom?

It’s been known for many years that Indian nicknames are not offensive to rank and file Native Americans. In 2002, Sports Illustrated commissioned a poll that included both American Indians and whites. The results:

. . . although Native American activists are virtually united in opposition to the use of Indian nicknames and mascots, the Native American population sees the issue far differently. Asked if high school and college teams should stop using Indian nicknames, 81% of Native American respondents said no. As for pro sports, 83% of Native American respondents said teams should not stop using Indian nicknames, mascots, characters and symbols.

Of course, other polls show the same thing. In 2003 and 2004, the Annenberg School ran a large national survey, piling up a massive number of respondents. 768 were American Indians, and 90% of them said that the nickname “Redskins” was not offensive. Only 9% of the Indians found the name offensive.

Redskins, supposedly, is one of (and perhaps the most) offensive of Indian nicknames. But real world American Indians don’t mind it.

Then how do we explain the Indian activists and tribal leaders who are so adamant?

Representing Whom?

It’s important to understand that the “leaders” of racial and ethnic minorities do not entirely, and perhaps not even primarily, represent the groups they supposedly represent.

Quite typically, they are in the business of pandering to white liberals.

Let’s take the example of “black leaders.” Who designated Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson the premier “black leaders” in America today? White liberals. Those in the media, politics, the interest group system, the bureaucracy and foundations.

It’s true that both men are fairly effective as rabble rousers, able to get out a fair sized crowd to demand that George Zimmerman be thrown in prison for life. But neither have done anything even approaching Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March.

So why are Sharpton and Jackson “black leaders,” and Farrakhan a rather marginal figure? Quite simply, because the attitudes and rhetoric of Sharpton and Jackson are close to what white liberals believe, and the views of Farrakhan are much less congruent with those of the left-leaning elites.

The same principle applies to Indian tribal leaders. White liberals have a lot of resources they need: lucrative gambling franchises, government grants, and favorable press. Liberals in the media can pretty much be depended on to not look too closely at the finances of Indian tribes, nor critically analyze the casino monopolies, nor question the political donations of the tribes. In other words, the liberals will stay on the reservation.

American Indians, like black people, face real problems. But an honest discussion of these problems would not serve the interests of white liberal elites. How generations of government oversight and bureaucratic supervision have created dependency among Indians doesn’t fit the liberal narrative. Talking about out of wedlock births in the black community or crime (the vast majority black-on-black) doesn’t fit the standard model of blacks as victims of white racism.

So let’s just convict George Zimmerman, that will improve conditions in the black community. Let’s just abolish Indian team names. That will make Native Americans better off.

When you can’t face the truth, you have to play an elaborate game of “let’s pretend.” That is what we have here.

Real Indians Don’t Mind “Redskins”

From the MSNBC web site:

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“Redskins” mascot acceptable, poll says

More than 90 percent of American Indians not bothered by name

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:21 p.m. ET Sept. 25, 2004

WASHINGTON - A poll of American Indians found that an overwhelming majority of them are not bothered by the name of the Washington Redskins.

Only 9 percent of those polled said the name of the NFL team is “offensive,” while 90 percent said it’s acceptable, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey, released Friday.

Annenberg polled 768 Indians in every state except Hawaii and Alaska from Oct. 7, 2003, to Sept. 20, 2004.

The survey found little disparity between men and women or young and old. However, 13 percent of Indians with college degrees said the name is offensive, compared with 9 percent of those with some college and 6 percent of those with a high school education or less. Among self-identified liberals, 14 percent found the term disparaging, compared with 6 percent of conservatives.

The franchise began in Boston as the Braves but was purchased in 1932 by George Preston Marshall, who changed the name to honor head coach William “Lone Star” Dietz, an American Indian. The team kept its monicker after moving to the nation’s capital in 1937.

The name and feather-wearing mascot have since been challenged.

A panel of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office canceled the team’s trademarks in 1999 on the grounds that the name disparages American Indians in violation of federal trademark law. But last year, a federal judge ruled the team can keep its name, finding insufficient evidence to conclude it is an insult to American Indians.

Some Indian leaders are still pressing their case, noting that many schools with similar mascots referencing Indians have made name changes in recent years.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.