Friday, September 13, 2013
"Redskins" still roiling football
The NFL team from Washington D.C. will wear uniforms that contain a moniker that even Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines as being “usually offensive” to Native-American ethnic groups. The team will also wear helmets that bear a stereotypical image of Native Americans.
Yet, rather than fine the Washington D.C. team owner, Daniel Snyder, for his use of an ethnic slur and require him to attend the same sensitivity training program as Cooper, Commissioner Goodell instead penned a letter to Congress proclaiming that the team name “Redskins” actually “stands for strength, courage, pride and respect” rather than for the scalps of murdered Native-Americans, as the term has historically been used.
While it is easy to understand why NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is reluctant to tell one of his 32 employers that he must change his team name, the NFL as an organization needs to decide whether it wants to uniformly enter to 21st century and stand up against hate speech, or instead to remain a relic of the American past when both the n-word and the R-word were used without proper rebuke in certain regions of our country.
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11 comments:
Marc Edelman must live in an alternate universe. In this one the term 'redskins' refers to the color of a person's epidermis, not their scalp.
AS for Merriam-Webster, they might as well add the phrase, "May be offensive to some" to the definition of every word in the dictionary.
The term "redskin" has NEVER been used to describe their scalp. The clown is a flat out liar. While I'm at it, the term native American is offensive. The fact that the American Indian got to this continent before the rest of us does not make them native.
@7:28 - Are you serious? The mind of a conservatard amazes me.
12:01 - Interesting point, if you are saying what it appears you are. It brings up a question: how long must a group live in an area to be considered native?
My great and great-great grandparents were natives of Norway, they were born there and immigrated in the 1830'3 and 40's
However my grandparents, parents and I were born in the United States.
So are we natives of the U.S.? Or must those of us with immigrant ancestors wait another few thousand years to be considered natives of the U.S.?
Logically I can claim to be a Native American. Realistically I realize my family and I are part of a subset of Native Americans - those whose ancestors were of the latest wave of immigrants and are set apart from the others by skin color, culture and history.
Either 7:28 is correct and we are all non-native, or you are and we are all native.
Doesn't matter to me. We all live here and have to figure out how to get along.
The Washington Redskins are so named because their first coach was a native American. The team was originally from Boston.
The term "indigenous" is usually applied to the first ever human "immigrants" in a region. It's silly to argue over the meaning and applications of the word "native".
I read the article. Then I went back and re-read it. It didn't seem to comport with Mr. Ray's typically libertarian take on the world that I have inferred from reading his blog for some time. I checked, or shall we say attempted to check the source - it appeared that the article was lifted from Forbes, but I could not pull up the Forbes article. Wherever it came from, I call B.S..
I am sick to death of people of whatever stripe fleeing in front of the political correctness charge of "racism" or "insensitivity" (but I'm a pretty insensitive guy myself!) And it seemed inconsistent with previous posts that Mr. Ray's article seemed to echo this PC BS.
In case anyone is curious, "native americans", i.e., American Indians did not evolve from a pre-human hominid on this continent; i.e., they are not native to this continent. They arrived on this continent by virtue of migration (immigration) from the Far East across the Bering Strait (questionably via a land bridge that existed at that time). Us white folks (Euro-Americans?) got here by virtue of immigration from Europe. They got here before we did, but immigrating here a few years or centuries before we did does not make them "native". It just means they got here earlier - and maybe that gives them some claim upon the continent.
But on the other hand, when we got here, we defeated them in every war we waged while we were establishing our hegemony on the continent (not every battle, but every war). That gives us some reasonable claim upon the continent that at least matches their claim of getting here first. And despite defeating them in detail, we let some of them live. I'd say that all things considered, we were pretty nice about it all. But then again, I'm NOT politically correct.
libtards use "redneck" all the time. obviously referring to skin color in a negative way. Also, didn't indians refer to white people as "pale face" at one time. It didn't bother me.
I am an American Indian and a season ticker holder for the Washington Red Skins. People need to get a life and worry about more important things like Obama destroying the USA.
Wouldn't the correct term for American Indians be first settlers since they settled here first but weren't native to this continent?
The term "redskins" is what American Indians used to refer to themselves as a people group. The idiots attacking this team name get it wrong on every single level, from the historical revisionism exemplified by Marc Edelman to viewing the use of the name as an insult when it is actually chosen for the strength and honor it represents.
And now someone will cry over my use of the term "idiots", to which I say, "If the shoe fits, wear it or find more appropriate footwear."
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