Detroit News Bans Use of 'Redskins' In Football Coverage
The Detroit News will no longer use the term 'Redskins' in its football coverage, "reflecting the growing view that the term is offensive to many Americans." No word on whether the paper will discontinue referring to the state of Oklahoma as such, considering it quite literally means 'red people' in Choctaw.
[Ed-S: Reinstating this thread, but we're gonna be moderating closely. Don't be an asshole no matter how much you think someone else is being an asshole rules in effect.]
this topic really brings out the stupid. The anti-PC crowd is completely ignorant of the facts re: the name and actual truth behind the naming of the franchise.
"What ever happened to majoriety rules?"
I'll tell you what happened: it never fucking happend in the 1st place. the whole structure of the republic is to make sure the majority is NOT in complete and total control of the policital power structure/decision making process to the detriment of the minority, you uneducated ignorant idiots.
STFU about "pussification of 'murica" and "PC rules" and "majority rules" and "reverse racism" red herrings and making equivalent statements b/t redskins and animal knicknames.
...Lets go bowling.
"Being offensive" is such watered down phrasing. It carries a suggestion that the person being offended should have a little control over their (over-)sensitivity.
So let's change "offensive" to "being an asshole" and "politically correct" to "not being an asshole." The reason to change the moniker of the Washington NFL team is because it's being an asshole.
The debate over sports teams named for Native Americans, either as groups or tribes or labels, is probably one of the shallowest debates out there. There's nothing past the surface: the teams were called a thing long enough to become a tradition to those fans because for years and years nobody gave a damn if we were being assholes to Native Americans. Our governments spent the 19th century paying people to kill Native Americans; just acting like a complete and total asshole to them by the late 20th century was a huge step up.
Finally, thanks to the Civil Rights movement, society started giving a damn about whether we were being assholes to some of our people in public spaces, and since then it's been a big hassle to pull down longstanding traditions of being assholes.
I've got a good friend--really smart guy--who's a HUGE 'skins fan. I asked him to frame the debate, since I don't have a stake personally, and just plain didn't understand the other side (I am politically anti-being an asshole, and Lions and Tigers and Wolverines are content with endangerment protections and Red Wings aren't even things, unless they're clay jugs). He said the problem with changing the name is it feels, to them, like an invasion. The analogy he used was what if somebody came to you and said your daughter's name means "person who lynches." He fully understands that it's offensive--he can't argue it at least--but it's REALLY annoying when people who aren't the child's father are coming up to him and making him feel bad for it. Maybe he will change it--people need to back off and realize he wasn't trying to offend anyone.
There's plenty of holes you can pick in his analogy, but at least it's a better argument to debate against than "Irish don't care!"
As to that, if you made a softball team called the Smelly Bloggers, I wouldn't be offended, even though I am a blogger and might resent the implication that I am smellier than the average person, because I am not easy to offend and relatively well groomed. BUT it's still being an asshole to bloggers, and by using that term you should be reasonably sure that you'll be being an asshole and will offend some bloggers. Ultimately you shouldn't be doing things that are assholey.
I am offended by the term Yankee. Though its origin uncertain what is certain is that its origin is of a perjorative and demeaning nature. Whether used to mock, cheese makers, pirates or in the pejorative manner in which Southerners used it. I, as a person living in the North cannot tolerate this offensive and flippant use of such a horrific and blatantly insensitive word. It is offensive and needs to stop being used.
That takes up the "Y" word. So, now we should have the R word, the N word and if there is any justice in the universe, the "Y" word.
What the hell is wrong with people?
This line of "reasoning" needs to stop, it is false, blatantly devoid of all but the most superficial logic, does not contribute to the debate in any manner, and in most intances just a veiled attempt to negate the truly hurtful nature of language used not just to insult but to dehumanize people in order to justify their enslavement and/or murder. If you are below the age of 18, you get a pass as not having achieved an adult level of reasoning and discourse. Otherwise, please stop.
You're welcome to use the N word, Y word, R word, or any other word you would like at home or in public. No matter what certain bloggers and talk show hosts may say, we are a free country and you will not be arrested. That said, most of polite society considers the N word and the R word to be roughly equivalent. Should you call a black person or native american one of these words you will deservedly get your ass pounded. This would be illegal in our free country, which may help with the pain, but won't fix your dental work. You can call a northern person a Y word if you wish, and, unless he's a Bosox fan, nothing is likely to ensue. That's because the Y word is in no way similar to either the R or N words other than they are all informal identifiers to groups of people. It's not because black people and native american people are more sensitive than northern white people. I hope this helps.
A lot of teams names are made to honor something from their state. Michigan-Wolverine State, Ohio-Buckeye State, Indiana-Hoosier State, Wisconsin-Badger State, Minnesota-Gopher State, Iowa-Hawkeye State, Nebraska-Cornhusker State, Oklahoma-Sooner State, Texas-Longhorn State, Tennessee-Volunteer State. In states that don't have great state nicknames to use, they use names like Sioux, Illini, Utes, etc. to emulate where they're from. I'm not sure why it is such a big deal.
I think Lord Grantham has articulated a lot of my feelings on this matter, but to add my unwanted 2 cents: Regarding the above quote - this isn't to call out the poster who wrote it, but it's a good articulation of an oft-cited arguement in defense of the Redskins name that is reasonable enough premise but one I still disagree with. There's a lot of false equivalence here that I think important to point out, and we'll leave out the obvious fatuous scenario of equating the feelings of animals like tigers or bulldogs with a group of people. If you're actually making that argument with a straight face, then you are a certifiable idiot and here's a buckeye necklace to wear.
In the case of a nickname like Hoosiers or Cornhuskers or even the Fighting Irish, those are generally accepted because they serve as a point of regional pride and are nicknames that the people themselved originated or collectively took on as their own. If I were to ask someone I presumed to be from Indiana if he was a Hoosier, he'd likely reply 'Damn right I'm a Hoosier' A situation that's somewhat dicier is the FSU Seminoles. The founding community of that university probably wasn't comprised of a majority of Seminole tribe members, but they got permission from the tribe to use the name and have AFAIK taken pains to honor the tribe even with their mascot. So, probably also OK. And again, if I called someone of Seminole ancestry a 'Seminole' it wouldn't be generally cause for offense.
Someone else mentioned a hypothetical scenario where a female owned a team and renamed them, say, the East Lansing Sluts to honor the indigenous female population. Among non-dominant groups, there has been a trend of taking traditional slurs and reclaiming them as marks of pride - you can see that with how gays have reclaimed the word queer and our own beloved state of Michigan in fact did so with the term 'wolverine' Again, equating this with the Redskins nickname is still a false equivalence. The redskin term has always been used to differentiate and denigrate the Native American population and has not been collectively embraced by a plurality of the Native Americans as a point of pride; two high schools not being arsed to change their redskins nickname is on par with a tradtiionally Chinese American high school not bothering to change its historical nickname of 'Coolies'
In point of fact hypothetical team names like the East Lansing Sluts* or the Washington Redskins both fail the social appropriateness test. You might greet your wife by saying 'Hey sexyboo' For you ladies, amongst your group of girlfriends you might call yourself 'bitches' as a term of affection; somewhat more controversially, amongst a group of black peeps, they might raz each other with the word 'Ni**a' If I as a non-husband, as a man and as a non-black used the terms 'sexyboo', 'bitch' or 'ni**a' - what reaction would and should I get?
The same applies to me or any non-Native calling a Native American a 'redskin'. It's time to change the name.
* - yes, I totally came up with that at random
It's one thing if it was the "Native Americans", which would be akin to the "Irish". It would be still another thing if it was the "Indians", which the baseball team is getting by with (including their fairly offensive mascot) with less outrage, because "Indian" isn't as derogatory but still has some negative connotations. "Redskins" is just flat out racist.
There is "nigger", there is "negro", there is "black". Only one of those terms would I say to an African-American. There is a second one I would feel comfortable saying in certain situations. There is another one in there where I better be trying to make a point or reading something to even feel comfortable saying it. Yet, I would be uncomfortable with a team named "the blacks". I wouldn't accept a team by the other two names.
I mean, you can start listing off derogatory names for a wide variety of groups that shouldn't fly, "Redskins" is on that list. "Nigger", "Chink", "Jap", "Jew", "Camel Jocky", "Orientals", "Spic", "Wetbacks", "Dothead", "Nazis", "Micks", "Wops", "Ruskies", "Polacks", etc, etc. They hardly have a need in our language outside of a historical context. They have no need in our society as team names. You can say all you want that the original intention of such a thing was to honor something, but it's not that any more.
And I have no problem with Chippewa, Illini, Seminoles, etc. Those are the actual names of those groups, that they go by. Naming a team or a university after them, by a name that isn't offensive to them, can rightly be seen as honoring those groups. Maybe Notre Dame should drop the "fighting" part of their name, but there is no problem with "Irish". There is a difference between a word that is commonly used to describe people, that can genuinely be considered something used to honor them in today's world, and something that is just plain racist, mean, or bigoted.
But at least the people making the argument for "Fighting Irish" vs "Redskins" are comparing people. The people comparing "Redskins" with "Wolverines"... really? That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
As for the "Oklahoma" thing. "Blackie" and "black people" don't have the same connotation. That's not sensitivity, that's the the way it is. "Black" and "negro" aren't the same, it's the way it is. They mean the same thing technically, but language is far from a technical thing, otherwise all writers would be the same, nothing would get lost in translation, and we wouldn't have things like sarcasm at our disposal. The fact that people can't see beyond the black and white of the matter is what makes this matter so contested and causes so many misunderstandings. Look into the actual substance. Yes, a lot of people get offended too easily these days. People are offended by damn near everything that isn't PC. There is a large difference between something not being PC and something that is just plain offensive though, regardless. The term "redskin" was always intended to have negative connotations. It still does today and shouldn't be the name of a team.
I appreciate your spelling out the ugly language. Using a word when talking about the word shouldn't be against any rules, and using replacements ... as in "n-word" or "n_____" just give the term more power.
Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist and linguist, has a compelling take on the use, or non-use, of the word "nigger' in his book "The Stuff of Thought", in a discussion of linguistic taboos. He suggests that although we all respect such taboos, to the point where we refer to them with "one degree of separation" (e.g. "the N word"), it can credit such words with a "dreadful moral power".
Louie CK, on the other hand, has a different take: fuck you for saying "the N word", you're just trying to get me to think "nigger" in my head.
Why don't we just put that ugly word and its references away for good.
1) it exists and therefore people will use it if they know the meaning, and, as we seem to agree, the less it's used the more powerful the ugliness.
2) it is an important part of a fair bit of art (Huckleberry Finn).
I appreciate your references (neither of which I was familiar with.) Go Blue!
Your first part is true, for multiple reasons. Many groups have taken up the phrases that have a negative connotation as a term of pride, therefore taking away some of the power that word once had. That's fine. On the other hand, completely ignoring words makes things no better. Like being "color blind" or completely ignoring race, you're missing a significant part aspect in our culture, society, and our peoples. Completely ignoring it is just as much an issue as constantly putting emphasis on it.
I also agree about its part of art and history. Huck Finn has the word in it, that's a part of that story, that's a part of that history, and it should be. Likewise, the 1980 Washington Redskins should always be the 1980 Washington Redskins. That's part of the history, that's who we were at that time in our society. You don't ignore that. You don't change the reference to that team now, like when writing a story set in a different era you don't ignore that these terms were often used in speech. They shouldn't be changed and they shouldn't be ignored. What they should be is seen, understood, and maybe make you feel a little uncomfortable. They should be that way to lose some of the power, hatrid, and connotation that they have in modern society, while maintaining the power to show how much capability we have for change, understanding, and improvement.
These things can simultaneously gain and lose power, but to do that, they shouldn't be ignored. Ignoring it isn't the answer. But that doesn't mean we can't improve upon ourselves in our society going foward. I'd like to see the "2013 Washington Redskins" immediately prior to the "2014 Washington Hogs" (or something akin). I doubt I will, but I think that is the way forward.
There are plenty of silly arguments all around on this issue, including that because a term was once used in a derogatory way or originated as a slur it must always be conceived as such.
What is not in dispute is that the term Redskins for the team was originated as a reference to Native Americans. Whether at that time it had mostly negative, neutral, or positive connotations I don't know, and nobody so far in this thread seems to have provided solid evidence for its use then, and I don't know how possible it is to determine the connotations of such a word as it was used over 70 years ago.
What matters now, I would argue, is how the label Redskins is currently perceived by Native Americans. I know there has been reference to a poll, but with no real details about how it was conducted, it doesn't really tell us much.
There are plenty of silly arguments all around on this issue, including that because a term was once used in a derogatory way or originated as a slur it must always be conceived as such.
What is not in dispute is that the term Redskins for the team was originated as a reference to Native Americans. Whether at that time it had mostly negative, neutral, or positive connotations I don't know, and nobody so far in this thread seems to have provided solid evidence for its use then, and I don't know how possible it is to determine the connotations of such a word as it was used over 70 years ago.
What matters now, I would argue, is how the label Redskins is currently perceived by Native Americans. I know there has been reference to a poll, but with no real details about how it was conducted, it doesn't really tell us much.