There are a couple of important things to consider about the controversy surrounding the pressure the NFL is trying to put on Daniel Snyder to change the name of his team. Just to catch you up to speed on a few facts:
- The US Patent office has canceled most though not all of the trademarks associated with the team. This means that if I want to start selling mugs with the team name and certain logos, I can, and Synder can't stop me.
- How many Native Americans are offended by the name? That really depends on what polls you look at, as any google search asking the question will show.
- That said, NFL Commissioner Roger Godell wants no one to be offended, so that's why he has begun to listen to Native Americans who are.
- The team became called the Redskins supposedly in honor of the coach, who was thought to be an Indian but in fact may not have been; it was also as much about promotion as anything else, to be able to have someone dress up in costume for the crowd (not unlike the use of blackface in minstrelsy, yes. And here's a pic to make that point: on the left is an image of "Sambo," the racist characture of Black boy, and on the right is that of Chief Wahoo, the mascot of the Cleveland Indians.)
So, having noted all these pieces of information, let's point out a few things that this case is and is not about.
It's not about "they're taking away our freedom." No one is putting Daniel Snyder in jail. No one is forcing him to sell the team. This isn't about First Amendment stuff, either. It's about trade. Would the Patent Office allow a sports team with the name "New York Niggers"? What if that had been the team's name since 1947? What, we can't change it?
It's not about maintaining a "tradition." Owning people was a tradition. So was segregating sports organizations by race. Be wary of the "purist" fan of any sport; go back far enough in time, and you realize that the "purists" wanted to keep Black players out of MLB. It's not in and of itself a good reason not to change the name.
Snyder does not intend the name to offend people; he says that it's meant to honor the "warrior spirit" of the Native American, who some condescending stuff that reminds one of James Fennimore Cooper's characterization of Uncas in Last of the Mohicans. And some radio commentators talk about "intent" as if that makes being offended problematic. There is intent and there is effect. The WB cartoonists may not have intended to perpetuate stereotypes of people of color in several of their cartoons, but that doesn't mean they are not racist stereotypes (which is why they are less likely to be put on DVD and Blu-Ray sets). In many legal matters, effect is more important than intent: a man may claim not to intend to offend a co-worker with some crude sexist remark, but that doesn't mean he won't be called into the HR office and given a talking-to.
Think of it this way: if an Englishman runs a B and B in the Hamptons of New York, and he tells a female guest, "breakfast starts at 6; what time shall I knock you up," he's going to get slapped! The fact that the British expression "knock you up" has a very different meaning from the American expression isn't going to help him, and if he keeps using that phrase, he'll probably get bad Yelp reviews and lose his business unless he changes his language, and too bad for him, he can't use the "but I'm British!" excuse.
But, "it's a slippery slope." Down what? So, one day the Washington team has to change its name, the next the government comes after your guns? Are you worried about being soooo PC that we end up living like the people in Fahrenheit 451, a society that decided that no books were better than any that offended even just the smallest group of people? Really? Is that what's going to happen? I've heard people ask, where do we draw the line on offense? Do we have to have a certain poll's percentage of people offended in order to change the name? Will Notre Dame have to give up "Fightin' Irish" one day? We've seen some college programs change their Native American names; the St. John's "Redmen" (sound familiar?) became the "Red Storm." And why can't we just look at each situation individually? A good test, as Mike Greenberg said on his radio show "Mike and Mike in the Morning," is simply this: would you use the word "Redskin" in any other context besides referring to the team? The answer is "no," because it's considered a slur, and so it makes sense to consider a name change.
Why does this matter? As author Sherman Alexie tells Bill Moyers, it's about cultural power -- or the real lack of it, for those whose ancestors were in the US before 1492. That's why the name "thing" is an issue. When you are in the cultural majority, such naming seems "natural," or perhaps (as per Genesis) your God-given authority. But it's not. Language is power. It's the little things that hurt even worse than the land-grabs and the reservations, Alexie once said.
And ultimately, how many of us will care if/when the team changes its name? The NBA's Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans, kept the name Hornets, then after the NBA gave Charlotte another team, the Bobcats (why did they try again? Oh, that's right, the new owner in Carolina was Michael Jordan), and a few years after that, the New Orleans Hornets changed their name to the Pelicans, and now the Bobcats are going to be the Hornets again, in Charlotte. (And I'm ignoring the fact that New Orleans once had an NBA team called the Jazz, which makes perfect sense, but they moved to Utah, where calling them the Jazz makes no sense at all.) Who gives a crap? How many people were OUTRAGED when the New York Highlanders changed their name to "Yankees"? A few, perhaps, but did any of them care when a few years later Babe Ruth was hitting 60 home runs and helping them on their run of 27 World Series titles? Did you know that once the University of Nebraska's football team was known as the Bugeaters? That's right, "Bugeaters." Anyone in Lincoln hoping they go back to it? The point: no one will really care.
I would want to add one last thought on the question of language and power that does give me food for thought.
Lenny Bruce's famous routine in which he just rattles off a ton of racist slurs (eventually calling them out as if he were an auctioneer) made a very fascinating argument: that the suppression of words people find offensive gives those words more power. (Think about the "bad words" we don't want our kids to say. Once they know Mom and Dad don't want them to use "fuck," they often gravitate to it. I know I did, and still do.) If society just keeps using words repeatedly, in an ordinary context, their power to hurt diminishes. Dick Gregory was so influenced by this routine that he called his autobiography Nigger, dedicating it to his mom, saying that now she shouldn't cry when they shout out the word because they are just plugging his book. (Gregory has since changed his view on the Bruce routine.) But what Bruce, in this context an idealist, overlooks is that language is not just about power, but power relations. That's why it does matter. But one other thing the debate on the name-change demonstrates is that language is a living thing; meaning is not totally fixed forever. The word "gay" now has a very specific cultural meaning that was not its only meaning a hundred years ago. It may be that the term "redskin" becomes somehow culturally accepted in twenty years; think about the very debate happening over hip-hop culture's use of nigga. (And yes, it does mean something different when middle aged college professor uses that term.)
Ultimately, this is not about freedom; it's about money. When the NFL starts losing money because of the loss of trademark revenue, that's when the name will change, and no one will cry the End of America after a few years.
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