I don't think replacing something seen as racist by some with another icon of perceived racism, Lincoln, would do much to help.
Name them the Washington Republicans, and have the mascot be Abe Lincoln riding an elephant.
Sounds like a mixed response. It doesn't look like it's an overwhelming amount of Native Americans who oppose the current name. I don't know if it's worth changing just to satisfy the percentage who are offended by the name. There will always be people who are offended by something someone else does, and changing the name doesn't change the historical reality.
What matters more is that no one in the Redskins organization or NFL means for the name to be offensive. Intentions matter more than old names or words used for the sake of continuity and team legacy.
We should instead conduct a poll asking, "should the American government give ALL the land back it took from your forefathers?", and if the answer is "yes", well maybe we should give them back America. Because honestly what was done was worse than what was said, if simple polling of opinion matters at all.
P.S. I'm an Indian-American and am highly offended by your misapplication of the term "Indian". It's been a few hundred years, you should know by now that this continent isn't India.
I never said no Indian cared, goal post shifting not found. No doubt some of the 45K don't give a shit.The original assertion was that no Indians gave a shit, which is patently false. Your goalpost moving of 45K does nothing to change that.
BTW, you are incredibly ignorant of the issue if you think it's just 45K:
Lazy dipshits, google is your friend. Try using it sometime.
The listed population of Indian tribes is around 1.2M. I think is safe to assume excludes most 1/16th Indians, like myself, who simply don't care enough to register.A poll does and would not mean anything after 1.2 million Native Americans' representatives are plaintiffs on the lawsuit. If 1.2 mil are upset, then change the stupid name.
We have bowed to the pressure and officially changed our name because of all the negativity, shame, humiliation, dissent, polarity, adversity, defiance, hatred, animosity, contempt, discrimination, division, violence, counter productivity, ill-spirit, un-Godliness, and hostility associated it.
The listed population of Indian tribes is around 1.2M. I think is safe to assume excludes most 1/16th Indians, like myself, who simply don't care enough to register.
Now we're up to nearly 100% of population?
Please stretch your facts more.
"the National Congress of American Indians, the largest intertribal organization, which represents more than 250 groups with a combined enrollment of 1.2 million."
Obama represents the U.S., do all Americans agree with everything he says?
For some reason I didn't even connect the name to Native Americans until the recent controversy came up. I don't care what they call the team, but if no one is even thinking about the term "beloved patriot" as anything but a football team, how is it offensive? Doesn't offense need to be given first before it can be legitimately received? Maybe we need to start working on separating "perceived" offense from actual offense, and only take action on the latter. Right now we have fallen into the mindset that EVERYTHING anyone can imagine a reason to be offended by deserves attention and correction, when obviously that isn't the case. Intention is everything here.
lol, ok I mean Native American. Can we still say dot or feather? j/k.
A poll does and would not mean anything after 1.2 million Native Americans' representatives are plaintiffs on the lawsuit. If 1.2 mil are upset, then change the stupid name. Just more ethnocentric American stupidity which is why Americans are treated like shit overseas. The world doesn't revolve around Anglo-America (i.e. the majority and popular opinion) and there is always backlash when this image is shattered to pieces by facts. This thread is a good display of our ignorant, uninformed stupidity based on anecdotal evidence from the Native American minority, not majority (which the lawsuit represents).
Holy shit, you cannot read or write. The total population of Indians is not "1.2 million", it's 5.2~ million as evidenced in the article.
<<But the thoughts and beliefs of native people are the basis of the debate over changing the team name. And looking across the breadth of Native America with 2 million Indians enrolled in 566 federally recognized tribes, plus another 3.2 million who tell the Census they are Indian its difficult to tell how many are opposed to the name.>>
Let's look at the logic path that you have decided to take so far:
1) A lawsuit was filed in 2013 by Native Americans representing 1.2 million people/50%~ of all tribes in the US because they found "Redskins" to be derogatory.
2) You quote a survey from 2004, or 9 years ago, that surveyed 768 people who don't mind "Redskins" and voluntarily claimed to be Indian.
3) With the evidence presented, you still preposterously feel the need to speak for all Native Americans and tell us that they think "Redskins" is still ok with them.
Either present stronger evidence or concede that your stance is based on a flimsy survey.
How about re-naming them to the "Washington Jews"??
Would the mascot be a matzo ball?
How about re-naming them to the "Washington Jews"??
Who cares? Should we keep renaming things just because people get offended? If they don't like it, don't follow the team or come up with the $1 billion+ required to buy the team and then change it.
You don't hear the Scandinavians complaining about a certain NFL team name.
How about re-naming them to the "Washington Jews"??
lol! I love it when this comes up!
Vikings vs Redskins! so comparable!
how about:
Cossacks vs N*ggers! so comparable
How about
Raiders vs Kikes! so comparable!
etc
Yeah, because people often go around calling Native Americans "redskins" as an insult these days. Ask black people if the "N word" is offensive. I'm sure you'll get 90% plus "yes" because it's still used today by racists as an extremely offensive word. beloved patriot wasn't a deliberately offensive word, and no team would have a derogatory word to represent their team spirit and unity. The point of the team name and symbol/logo was to represent strength, and a Native American warrior was seen as tough and stoic. The word "beloved patriot" wasn't meant to be any more offensive than saying someone is "white" or "black" today, it's just a descriptor of a people group. Hence I think "Vikings" is comparable. You have a similar warrior type of the past, though calling a Scandinavian person a Viking today would be met with weird looks and yes, maybe someone would take offense at the caricature.
My point is that if people can't see the name as being honorable or at least as neutral, then we really can't have anything except animals representing mascots unless there is some magical level of approval or disapproval that decides whether it's okay to use a name. I don't think it's necessary to revise the branding of something just because people today find it offensive though historically that wasn't the case, at least not in every situation or this one in particular.
I'm pretty sure if there was a team proposal called the Blackskins or the Whiteskins it'd be shot down with fervor. Many people take "red" as an adjective which is the problem, they aren't seeing beloved patriot as a noun. For example, Bravehearts isn't making reference to anyone's skin, regardless if beloved patriot = same meaning as a Braveheart. For another analogy, look at the controversy around "Negro Mountain" which was named after a heroic black slave who fought in the French and Indian War:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/lawmaker-rename-negro-mountain-article-1.1249729
The mountain was named after skin color which is the problem, and "negro" can also be derogatory to a chunk of blacks. That is the crux of the matter. The spirit of the name (brave and heroic people) is not the same as the letter of the name (negro, red) which can be viewed as derogatory to big chunks of each demographic.
I would agree with you but it's over a million people, which is a lot. We aren't talking about some stupid school district that's mad about something. Imagine if 1 million Native Americans were outside of your door ready to kick your ass because you kept calling them a racial slur. You'd be scared shitless, so cut the American ethnocentric greater-than-thou-b/c-I'm-the-racial-majority attitude and show some respect to your fellow Americans. You don't go up to black people calling them the N word, do you? It's no different, and I'm not embellishing here. Just ask the National Museum of the American Indian director about it:
<<"It is the equivalent of the n-word," Gover said. "That's how it was used when I was a child. That's the name people chose to call me if they wanted to hurt my feelings, and I think that's still the case in many circumstances.">>
http://www.wtop.com/41/3219546/American-Indian-museum-tackles-racism-in-US-sports
Amazing that your parents never taught you how to treat other people, I would have kicked the shit out of you if we were in high school and you called one of my friends a racial slur. In fact, I have kicked the shit out of a racist Nazi motherfucker who called my friend the N word (said he was just a dumb N) right in back of a restaurant while we were on duty. He left crying, bloody, and with broken glasses. Don't be that kid who was raised to hate others.