There’s nothing more symbolic in sports than a team’s name and mascot. Team spirit and fanaticism revolve around names and mascots in every league and association. Players are proud to be a Celtic or a Jaguar. So what sense is there in a team playing under a name and banner that encapsulates racism and disrespect? The Washington Redskins don’t seem to see a problem.
The controversy surrounding the name of the Washington Redskins is decades old. The history of the terms “red” and “redskins” is said to originate in the pre-colonial and colonial periods of the U.S. “Red” most likely came about because of Native Americans’ complexion or because they painted their faces red, according to Slate online magazine. The term “redskin” was first used by Native Americans to differentiate between themselves and European settlers, according to an article called “Are You Ready For Some Controversy? The History Of ‘Redskin’” from the National Public Radio; the term was used by Native American tribes in their negotiations with the French and Americans.
It wasn’t until the term was used in the novel “The Pioneers,” written by James Fenimore Cooper, that Americans started using “redskins” when referring to Native Americans, according to NPR. And as time passed, the word became a pejorative. Lyman Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of Oz,” wrote, “With [Sitting Bull’s] fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them,” encouraging the wiping out of the remaining Native Americans in the U.S., according to NPR.
A Native American writer for Esquire magazine said that among his family, the term “redskins” refers to the bloody scalps of Native Americans who were victims of “institutionalized genocide” in the northeast. He said his mother called it “the single-most offensive name one could ever call a Native American.”
While it could be argued that the term is not inherently racist because it was first used by Native Americans themselves, this doesn’t negate that term evolved — which words often do — and became a word used by non-Native Americans to demean and ridicule them. A “Tom and Jerry” cartoon cited by NPR, titled “Redskin Blues,” is just one of many examples of the caricaturing and ridiculing of Native American tribes and depictions of them as barbaric and incompetent.
In 2013, a delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia and several other congressmen sent letters to NFL Commissioner Robert Goodell, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and the rest of the league’s teams imploring them to change the name “Washington Redskins,” according to ESPN; a Redskins spokesman responded that “85 percent” of the delegate’s constituents disagreed with the call for a name change.
Last August, ESPN reported that Bruce Allen, president of the team, said the team “will not reconsider” a name change. More recently, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said there is nothing offensive about the team’s name, according to Aol.com. “It’s a sport, for crying out loud. It’s a football team. I’m missing something here, I guess,” he said in an interview.
So why have eight schools, most of which were high schools, stopped using “redskins” in their team names and as a mascot since 2013, according to the Huffington Post? The schools are located in New York, Washington, Texas, Oklahoma and Canada, and their decisions to drop the term reflect a progressive, courteous attitude and cultural awareness that the NFL, and the entire arena of sports, needs to adopt.
No matter how many times we tell ourselves it’s not alright to judge a book by its cover, what’s on the surface often does reveal underlying prejudices. There’s no doubt that the football team’s logo, a side profile of a Native American with a cartoonishly large forehead and nose, is stereotypical. It makes a mockery of Native Americans, their tragic history, their disrespected culture, their lingering pain.
Everything about the team — its mascot, its name, its appearance, its decision to remain stuck in the past — indicates that the feelings of Native American are insignificant. They aren’t worth a simple name change, they don’t deserve respect as human beings and Americans, and they can’t be allowed to heal from the injuries of the past.
Instead of representing the teamwork, sportsmanship and respect that being a part of a team or rooting for a team is supposed to incite, “redskins” is nothing more than a disrespectful, racist mockery of a people loved by few and wronged by many.
