Win Today, Lose Tomorrow: Why Republicans Protect the "Honor" of Offensive Team Names

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Win Today, Lose Tomorrow
Why Republicans Protect the "Honor" of Offensive Team Names

By Jeremiah Goulka


Every once in a while a small controversy comes along that helps explain a big problem. This National Football League season has provided such a controversy. The name of Washington D.C.'s football team, the Redskins, is under fire. "Redskins" is an offensive term and therefore inappropriate for the team representing our nation’s capital. That's kind of obvious, right?

Most Republicans don't think so. They defend the name, as they do other Native American-based team names, such as the college football champion Florida State Seminoles, calling them tokens of "honor." They claim that the names celebrate a "heritage" and "tradition" of "bravery" and "warrior-spirit," and they publicly wonder: What's the problem?

The Onion, that fine news source, captured it in one neat, snide sentence: "A new study... confirmed that the name of the Washington Redskins is only offensive if you take any amount of time whatsoever to think about its actual meaning." So what's keeping Republicans from thinking about it?

For one thing, Republicans tend to wear a set of blinders, crafted and actively maintained by the party's functionaries and its media priesthood. They also suffer from mental roadblocks shared by American whites more generally, including a thin, often myth-based “knowledge” about Native Americans. Collectively, all of this blinds Republicans to what it's like to be on the receiving end of power at home and abroad. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175793/tomgram%3A_jeremiah_goulka%2C_republicans_and_the_redskins/#more

[FatBuddy]

1. because they masturbate to photos of bull connor

and the blood of primeval john bircher klansmen runs in their veins

[Sgent]

2. I don't get the hate on Florida State

Seminoles is not derogatory, Redskins is. In addition FSU has worked with the Seminole Nation (FL) to insure they are honoring the local natives, and have their blessing on using the name.

[caraher]

4. I'm not close to the issue, but here are detailed criticism of FSU

From a recent blog at The Nation, the argument goes, in part, that there isn't a true "agreement with the Seminole Nation" but more of a lucrative marketing agreement with some Florida Seminole resort and casino operators:

But what about the Florida State Seminoles, whose football team on Monday night won the Vizio/Dow Chemical/Blackwater/Vivid Video BCS National Championship Game? The NCAA, since 2005, has had formal restrictions against naming teams after Native American tribes, and yet there were the Seminole faithful: thousands of overwhelmingly Caucasian fans with feathers in their hair, doing the Tomahawk chop and whooping war chants on national television. Their passions were stirred into a frenzy by a white person, face smeared with war paint, dressed as the legendary chief Osceola riding out on a horse. As Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated gushed, “Chief Osceola plants the flaming spear in the Rose Bowl. Awesome.” (Osceola was adopted after the school quietly retired their previous Native American mascot “Sammy Seminole.”)

I have been to dozens of Redskins game and have never seen anything close to this kind of mass interactive minstrelsy. Yet there are no protests against this spectacle, no angry editorials and no politicians jumping on the issue. Why is that? Because as any Florida State fanatic will shout at you, the university has “a formal agreement with Seminole Nation” and that makes everything all right. Fans treat this much-touted agreement like they have a “racism amnesty card” in their back pocket. The approval of the Seminole Nation, they will tell you makes it all A-okay. Actually it doesn’t. It doesn’t first and foremost because the existence of this “agreement with the Seminole Nation” is a myth.

The agreement is with the Florida Seminole Tribal Council and not the Seminole Nation. The majority of Seminoles don’t even live in Florida. They live in Oklahoma, one of the fruits of the Seminole Wars, the Indian Removal Act and The Trail of Tears. These Oklahoma Seminoles—who, remember, are the majority—oppose the name. On October 26, 2013, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma’s governing body passed a resolution that read in part, “The Seminole Nation condemns the use of all American Indian sports team mascots in the public school system, by college and university level and by professional teams.”

As for the Florida Seminole Tribal Council, it is the owner of a series of luxury casino hotels throughout the state where the Seminole “brand” is prominently on display. The Tribal Council also bought the Hard Rock Cafe for $965 million in cash in 2006, which thanks to the Seminoles’ “first-nation status” now also offers gambling in its Florida locales. Hard Rock corporate called this “the perfect marriage of two kindred spirits.” Seminole Nation Hard Rock Hotel and Casino T-shirts are available for purchase.

Apparently the school's longer history does include some rather offensive portrayals...

From what I understand, prior to the formalized relationship with the tribe in the 1970′s, the image of the university was not Osceola (who is a real person, in case you didn’t know. Though the image is the profile of a white faculty member), but a stereotypical mis-mash named “Sammy Seminole” who was accompanied by “Chief Fullabull,” both of whom wore cartoonish and stereotypical outfits and clowned around at games. Trying to be more “sensitive” they changed “Fullabull” to “Chief Wampumstompum.” I’m not kidding. Osceola and Renegade (the horse) were introduced in the late 70′s.

[hfojvt]

3. what's keeping Democrats from thinking about it?

Supposedly 59% of Democrats support keeping the name http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/redskins/2014/01/02/team-name-controversy-public-policy-polling/4297665/

One thing about a mascot name. My school was called "The Tigers". The point of such a name is that "you don't want to tangle with a Tiger" because they will rip you to shreds.

But at the same time, my home town was named after the Huron Indians. But how did the Huron Indians get their name? They did NOT call themselves Huron. That was a name that the French gave them. One source tells me that the word derives from French slang that basically means 'slobs'.

Yet at the same time, French in America would write back to France about how noble and awesome the Hurons Indians were. Except, of course, they weren't from India either.

Then there's Delaware. Named, of course, after the Delaware Indians. Except the Delaware Indians, it is said, were named after some territorial Governor, Thomas De La Warr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_West,_3rd_Baron_De_La_Warr

Then, of course, there are certain movements. The word negro is now considered "offensive". But Martin Luther King did not think it was offensive. He used it all the time in his books.

But it's cool. Let's change the name to "Washington Palefaces."

Because you really don't want to mess with a paleface. They will rip you to shreds.

Gonna be kinda strange though when most of the players on the Washington Palefaces are black. Then again, most of our atheletes were not really tigers either.