What Will The Redskins Change Their Name To?

After all, humanity had warriors before it had native Americans.

 

That's why I've never figured out why "Warriors" was put on the nickname no-fly list.
If that's the nickname, like it was with Marquette, and people are mad because the mascot was an Indian, then just change the mascot to something less innocuous. Make it a Roman gladiator or an armored Greek warrior, something along those lines. There's no need to change everything.
Even "Braves" can be made less controversial with a well-done mascot and logo. Get rid of drunken Chief Wahoo and work with a local tribe to design something that better honors the term and its heritage. There's no reason "Braves" should be any more derogatory than "Spartans" or "Trojans".

 

The people who go around grumbling about how come some group gets to decide what is or isn't offensive are like most Americans: They know very little about the history of Native Americans in this country.

Let's see. When blacks were slaves, they got constantly referred to as "niggers" and "darkies" as they were being ordered about. Those words were still tossed around when slavery was banned and then segregation came about.

The Native American tribes who were kicked off land even when they were willing to assimilate with the rest of the population, or were killed by troops when the tribe hadn't done anything wrong, heard terms such as "redskin" or "savage" tossed about as they were being ordered around.

This is the reason why "redskin" and "savage are considers slurs against Native Americans. The usage of the words against them was no different than the usage of "nigger" and "darkie" against blacks.

And to point out Native Americans who say the word doesn't offend them is like pointing to rappers who declare their usage of that N-word in their material as "taking ownership of the word." They both fail to understand the history behind the usage of the word as why it's offensive and why it's wrong.

And while we have plenty of video documentation of blacks being subject to abuse during the protests against segregation, we have no such documentation of Native American tribes being abused because, at the times those incidents took place, the technology to do so just wasn't available.

It's got nothing to do with somebody one day deciding a word was offensive to them and everything to do with people who have little knowledge about a subject and just make assumptions based on that lack of knowledge.

 

Underline that part.

 

Though I'm not a big Wikipedia quoter, here's what it's got on the historical use for anyone confused about how offensive the term may be:

"Redskin" was used throughout the English-speaking world (and in equivalent transliterations in Europe) throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a common term of reference for indigenous Americans. However, the more commonly used term from early colonization through the twentieth century was "Indian", perpetuating Columbus' belief that he had found the Indies.[9] The first use of red-skin or red Indian may have been limited to specific groups that used red pigments to decorate their bodies, such as the Beothuk people of Newfoundland who painted their bodies with red ochre.[10] Redskin is first recorded in the late 17th century and was applied to the Algonquian peoples generally, but specifically to the Delaware (who lived in what is now southern New York State and New York City, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania). Redskin referred not to the natural skin color of the Delaware, but to their use of vermilion face paint and body paint.[11] The indigenous peoples of the continent had no common identity, and referred to themselves using individual tribal names, which is also preferred to the present day. Group identity for Native Americans only emerged during the late 18th and early 19th century, in the context of negotiations between many tribes signing a single treaty with the United States.[12]

Some claim the term is a particularly egregious racial epithet that represents a bloody era in American history in which Indigenous Americans were hunted, killed, and forcibly removed from their lands by European settlers.[13] The claim often centers around a proclamation against Penobscot Indians in 1755 issued by King George II of Great Britain, known commonly as the Phips Proclamation.[14][15] The proclamation orders, “His Majesty’s subjects to Embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and Destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians.” The colonial government paid 50 pounds for scalps of males over 12 years, 25 pounds for scalps of women over 12, and 20 pounds for scalps of boys and girls under 12. Twenty-five British pounds sterling in 1755, worth around $9,000 today —a small fortune in those days when an English teacher earned 60 pounds a year.[14] However, since the proclamation itself does not use the word redskin, citing it as the origin of "redskin = scalp" has also been called "revisionist history".[16]

A linguistic analysis of books published between 1875 and 1930 show an increasingly negative context in the use of redskin, often in association with "dirty", "lying", etc.; while benign or positive usage such as "noble" redskin were used in a condescending manner.[9] The term continued in common use until the 1960s, as evidenced in Western movies, but is now largely considered a pejorative and is seldom used publicly (aside from the football team - see below). As with any term perceived to be discriminatory, different individuals may hold differing opinions of the term's appropriateness.[17]

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Now regardless of whether the term Redskin was used in the Phips proclamation or not, if a group of people with the orders to exterminate another group, devise a nickname for that group, then yes, that nickname will be deemed racist. It's not even a question.

 

Hondo has problems with reading. And with comprehension. And with common sense. Pretty much with all it means to be an adult.

 

Give us time. There was no Native American offense taken until guilty white liberals made it a cause in the '80s.