“…try explaining and defending the nickname to a child. It’s impossible.” -Peter King
Mr. Snyder,
I hereby resign my support for the football team that you own; my reasoning is presented below.
“…try explaining and defending the nickname to a child. It’s impossible.” -Peter King
Mr. Snyder,
I hereby resign my support for the football team that you own; my reasoning is presented below.
The one point that I have found, in my various conversations, to be largely inarguable is that the term “Redskins” is racist, as it isolates a certain people based on the color of their skin. People will make various arguments around this fact, but never a functional argument against it. So while various notions about tradition, history, merchandising, the rights of private business, and other detours can be entertained, this fact resounds wholly and usually silently over any discussion, to the point where it often isn’t mentioned; both side of the discussion acknowledge, and then proceed with diversion.
I feel at this point it is important that I acknowledge and admit taking part in these diversions for a very long time. I have encountered no justification, reasoning, or excuse that I have not myself adopted for some amount of time. I stumbled into Redskins fandom accidentally; as a child in North Carolina, before the Panthers existed, the Redskins were the regional team (along with the Cowboys, which I wouldn’t understand for years). My neighbor’s grandfather was a big Kansas City fan, and the combination of colors and racist emblems confused me; I thought they were one and the same for the longest time. My family moved to the DC area in 1990, and the Redskins proceeded to storm to the Superbowl the very next season. I knew who the Hogs were, I wore a nose at school during the playoffs, and we won. It was sealed. I was a ‘skins fan, dyed in the wool.
And since that initial embrace, so many years ago, I have thoroughly defended the name, the tradition, the history! It’s historical. I was once told that the team was named after a former coach–who was Native American, you see, so the name isn’t offensive, it’s in fact quite the opposite! Within that same vein, there is also the meritorious argument that the term first shows up etymologically as a self-descriptor used by Native Americans. I imagine that’s supposed to comfort native peoples as millions of dollars are made selling a caricature of their grandfathers. We’re also told that varying percentages of native people don’t find the name offensive–to say so directly states that certain percentages of native peoples do find it offensive. Where’s the margin? How many native people would have to respond to a poll to push it over the edge? But I digress.
The history, Mr. Snyder? The Redskins entire history, up to this very day, is rife with racism. From refusing to racially integrate to dressing people up as caricatures of native peoples, it is racism all the way through today. Why not finally leave it in the history books, instead of driving it forward? But apparently this conversation is about history, so here are some images from the Massacre at Wounded Knee.
For those of you who don’t know, I’ll summarize Wounded Knee. We (the United States) wanted to disarm the Lakota. When we arrived, their chief, Spotted Elk, didn’t want to give up his rifle, because he said he’d paid for it fair and square. And so we killed all of them. Unarmed Lakota fled, and they were chased down and killed.
That’s the history of Washington DC and “Redskins,” Mr. Snyder, and you insult anyone who’s reasonably literate to imply otherwise. Now…
Let’s talk about that tradition for a moment. This racism is just a continuance of Washington DC football’s long and storied history of being at the forefront of racism. George Preston Marshall, who owned the Redskins from their founding in Boston through their move to DC and well afterward, was an old-school racist. Not just racist as in the way your grandpa may sometimes refer to “the blacks” when he’s drunk, but racist as in he thought that races shouldn’t intermingle socially, and most certainly not on a sports team. This guy could’ve made Paula Deen feel uncomfortable. To quote him directly:
“We’ll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites.”
Because of this racist asshole, the Redskins were the very last team in the entire NFL to racially integrate. They only did so when it appeared that Marshall would lose the lease to his stadium if he did not relent. When Marshall proposed to his wife, he’d hired black servers to dress up as servants from Gone With The Wind. This is eugenics-and-phrenology level racism.
What other racist traditions should we reinstate? Segregated water fountains? But the argument of history and tradition, despite being easily dismissed as worthless nostalgia at their best, pale in comparison to the one inarguable fact:
The only reason we’re having this conversation is because of one of the most thorough genocides in human history.
And this is why San Francisco couldn’t have a soccer team named the Yellowskins, or North Carolina couldn’t field the Blackskins. There are Asian Americans in San Francisco, there are African Americans in Cackalacky, but there are vanishing few Native Americans in the Washington, DC area. One can walk around Washington, DC and Virginia safe and secure in the knowledge that while they may encounter people who are semantically offended, the possibility of encountering a single person, let alone a group of people, who are anything more than a tiny fraction Native American is virtually nil. The eradication of the native peoples of America in the original colonies is functionally complete. There isn’t a fat chance in hell that you’ll walk into a bar to find that it’s populated with a group of Native Americans who take offense to the picture on your shirt. And that’s the difference between the redskins and the blackskins or the yellowskins. The only place I know of to go get a plate of Native American food is at the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall. From that location, near the very center of The District, you can walk for miles in any direction and encounter the palette of a hundred peoples, but the only place you’ll find native food is the same building where we keep some of the only evidence that they ever existed.
To me, this veil of safety is paramount to the argument. It is safe to wear this racially offensive name and logo because unless you stumble onto tribal land a thousand miles from DC, you’ll never offend the person you’re wearing a caricature of. It’s just cowardly. So when people speak of the history of the name, the tradition, I can now sometimes barely do anything other than leave my maw agape at them. To speak of the history and tradition of the Redskins name in DC as a positive thing is to indicate either complete or willful ignorance of very basic facts.
In conclusion, Mr. Snyder, I am giving away all of my gear, and will purchase no items nor tickets until the name is changed. As soon as the name is changed, and I can wear the name of a DC team without hearkening back to genocide, rape, and smallpox, I’ll probably empty my bank account with a truck on your front doorstep.
P.S. How the hell did we blow that lead on Dallas last Sunday? Sweet baby JEEEZUS.
By Ian Graham
Top Image: Sonic drive-thru, Belton MO, Dec. 2013. Via red-face.us
