Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

If anything it is anything BUT Communist. Sounds market driven to me.[/quote]

Interesting that Nike, a leading sponsor of sweatshop labor, is offended by a nickname.

I remember reading about the team name in Sports Illustrated for Kids 30 years ago. It is amazing the name has lasted this long. Many college names like this got changed in the 1990s.

Terry Baldshaw wrote: Interesting that Nike, a leading sponsor of sweatshop labor, is offended by a nickname.

It seems par for the course to me.
Support cosmetic changes while exploiting the helpless for monetary gain.
It's the "woke" corporation agenda.

How about the Washington Marshalls?

I live in North Dakota, and a few years ago when the University of North Dakota dropped the name Fighting Sioux, I disagreed with that decision, because I didn't believe the Lakota/Dakota/Sioux people in the region had been given an opportunity to weigh in on the situation. I firmly believe that the school could have continued using the name if they had just opened real, honest dialogue. Instead, they dismissed the name just like they have dismissed the Native American populations themselves. Dropping the name at that point was actually a racist act, in my opinion, because there has been real support from the Native American community for using the name for their people if it could done out of real respect. The white men in charge, however, refused to show any respect; instead, they decided to just get rid of the name, and now it's lost. (Ironically, the school continues to sell Fighting Sioux merchandise on a limited basis to protect the trademark so that it can't be appropriated by another entity.)

While this was going on, I suggested to as many folks as I could that instead of choosing a new nickname (they are now the Fighting Hawks), the university should just be "North Dakota" without a mascot. This is something Washington could do, too. Just be "Washington" and continue with the color scheme. Drop the helmet logo altogether. You can't see a logo half the time you're looking at the Steelers and they look fine without it.

When you drop the nickname, not only can you avoid controversy, but you can let the fans decide what they're going to be.

Bryan wrote:How about the Washington Marshalls?

I was thinking they might go with the Washington Federals or the Washington Express.
Heck, they could cut right through all the hypocrisy and just go with the Washington Federal Express...

"Redskins" was an old self-identifying term used by Native Americans. I've seen documentation to prove it. They also used the name "whiteskins" for those of European ancestry. I don't buy the notion that it's the equivalent of calling someone a "kike". "Redskins" may be an antiquated term like "negro", but nobody claims "negro" was intended as a slight.

I kinda like the name "Redtails" being floated about.

JohnR wrote:"Redskins" was an old self-identifying term used by Native Americans. I've seen documentation to prove it. They also used the name "whiteskins" for those of European ancestry. I don't buy the notion that it's the equivalent of calling someone a "kike".

If you had grown up in Wisconsin, as I did, you might not feel that way.

Shawano, the small city where I was born, was the market town for the Menominee Indian Reservation. I constantly heard "redskin" being used a a pejoriative term...and, even as a child, I noticed that was never used when a Menominee was around to hear it.

When I went to high school in Green Bay, quite a few of my classmates were bused in from the nearby Oneida Reservation. Bullies frequently attacked them by calling them "redskins," in much the same way that an anti-Semite might call someone a "kike."

To me, the fact that Native Americans have called themselves "redskins" is irrelevant. Many, probably most, young black men are quite comfortable with calling one another the N-word doesn't mean I should feel free to apply it to them. And feminist women commonly call one another "girls," but they don't like it if your or I call them that.

rhickok1109 wrote:

JohnR wrote:"Redskins" was an old self-identifying term used by Native Americans. I've seen documentation to prove it. They also used the name "whiteskins" for those of European ancestry. I don't buy the notion that it's the equivalent of calling someone a "kike".

If you had grown up in Wisconsin, as I did, you might not feel that way.

Shawano, the small city where I was born, was the market town for the Menominee Indian Reservation. I constantly heard "redskin" being used a a pejoriative term...and, even as a child, I noticed that was never used when a Menominee was around to hear it.

When I went to high school in Green Bay, quite a few of my classmates were bused in from the nearby Oneida Reservation. Bullies frequently attacked them by calling them "redskins," in much the same way that an anti-Semite might call someone a "kike."

To me, the fact that Native Americans have called themselves "redskins" is irrelevant. Many, probably most, young black men are quite comfortable with calling one another the N-word doesn't mean I should feel free to apply it to them. And feminist women commonly call one another "girls," but they don't like it if your or I call them that.

Point taken. Context is everything, but is it so clear cut that this is a pejorative term? If you have sports teams on reservations proudly using the name you're not suggesting that they are ignorant, are you?
Maybe it's a matter of ownership, like the N-word. It can be used within the community but a questionable choice of words from an outsider?

JohnR wrote:

rhickok1109 wrote:

JohnR wrote:"Redskins" was an old self-identifying term used by Native Americans. I've seen documentation to prove it. They also used the name "whiteskins" for those of European ancestry. I don't buy the notion that it's the equivalent of calling someone a "kike".

If you had grown up in Wisconsin, as I did, you might not feel that way.

Shawano, the small city where I was born, was the market town for the Menominee Indian Reservation. I constantly heard "redskin" being used a a pejoriative term...and, even as a child, I noticed that was never used when a Menominee was around to hear it.

When I went to high school in Green Bay, quite a few of my classmates were bused in from the nearby Oneida Reservation. Bullies frequently attacked them by calling them "redskins," in much the same way that an anti-Semite might call someone a "kike."

To me, the fact that Native Americans have called themselves "redskins" is irrelevant. Many, probably most, young black men are quite comfortable with calling one another the N-word doesn't mean I should feel free to apply it to them. And feminist women commonly call one another "girls," but they don't like it if your or I call them that.

Point taken. Context is everything, but is it so clear cut that this is a pejorative term? If you have sports teams on reservations proudly using the name you're not suggesting that they are ignorant, are you?
Maybe it's a matter of ownership, like the N-word. It can be used within the community but a questionable choice of words from an outsider?

I've worked among black males, sometimes I was the only white person among seven or eight black guys. The language they use among themselves would take the bark off a tree. It's funny how delicate about language they purport themselves to be.

By the way, they were nice to me. They were impressed by my knowledge of sports history, football in particular. I was always answering questions from my black co-workers about sports.