The Washington Redskins have been getting a substantial amount of flak for the past few years for their offensive team name. Realistically, mass amounts of people have seen the name as offensive for much longer than the past few years, but for the sake of concision and relevancy, only the past few years need addressing.
On the off chance that you are unaware of how the Redskins’ name could be offensive; “Redskins” refers to people of primarily Native American descent. The logo of the aforementioned team is a side profile of a Native American man. Generally speaking, sports teams are named after some kind of notable aspect of their town or, more often, an empowering mascot. In the case of the Washington Redskins, their “empowering mascot” is a Native American man. Naming the team the way they do, there are implications of aggression, as would be with teams like “Cowboys”, “Broncos”, “Raiders”, et cetera. The problem with this is that those “aggressive” undertones are being directly associated with a group of people; which is blatantly racist.
Recently, more of the general public is becoming aware of this kind of thing and are becoming increasingly displeased with how comfortable NFL fans are with the Redskins’ name. As a kind of retort to this displeasure, the Washington Post put up a poll directed toward Native Americans to determine whether or not the group involved found the name offensive. The results of which indicated that nine out of ten Native Americans did not find that the Redskins’ name was offensive. The results of this survey were greatly celebrated by Redskins owner, Daniel Snyder.
After this survey had been released, a number of Native Americans came out opposed to the results of the survey. One of the more notable opponents of the survey is Suzan Harjo, a woman belonging to the Hodulgee and Cheyenne tribes, who was the lead plaintiff in the first case challenging the team’s trademark. She, personally, has been fighting for Native American rights, as the President of the Morning Star Institute, since the 1960’s.
The reason for her dismissal of the survey is the way in which the survey was performed. To begin with, the poll had an abysmally small sample size. It consisted of calling only 504 Native Americans across the entire country; a country consisting of over 5.4 million Native Americans. A prior poll by ESPN consisting of only 1019 random Americans, over twice what the Washington Post polled, resulted in approximately 23% of people believing the name should be changed. One would imagine that when exclusively Native Americans are polled, more would be in favor of changing the name. This illustrates the ineffectiveness of these small sample sizes.
Those who genuinely feel as though the name needs to be changed will continue fighting for it, and, with luck, will succeed. The fact that the issue of renaming possibly racist team names is up for debate demonstrates how inconsiderate these team owners are. Whether it seems offensive or not, the position these teams are putting Native Americans in is disrespectful. Take the Cleveland Indians, for example. Their mascot is a ridiculous caricature of a Native American, crudely named “Chief Wahoo.” On top of that, children have been taught since kindergarten that Native Americans are not “Indians” in the interest of progress. Having these teams using this kind of terminology is directly counter-productive.
The fact of the matter is that this issue affects an incredible amount of people; living, breathing people. The idea of disrespecting these people for the sake of tradition or pride is inconceivable. No amount of any kind of history should inhibit society from trying to progress past this current state of disrespect, but here we are; complete with small sample sizes for the sake of justifying internalized prejudice.
