Klatt's 3.0 Mock Draft Has JJ Going to the Vikings

If you can't see the difference between using slurs and using a group of people who were systematically killed and displaced by this country as a kind of jokey mascot vs a culture of raiders that mostly just impacted northern Europe, I can't help you

Viking was a profession, not a race. 

Current society only seems focused as far back as the colonial period.  Nothing of consequence  that could be discussed happened before.  

I was on the Vikings pee wee baseball team when I was 8. I feel bad now... Just kidding. We kicked ass. We won one game 52-3.

Minnesota has a lot of people of Scandinavian descent. Would you have a similar complaint about a team in Jersey called the “Romans?”

Slavery, raiding, and all sorts of other cruelties were just part of human civilization back then. The “Vikings” were not unique in this regard.

I would say that what made American slavery particularly egregious is that it continued and was practiced by the same peope who crafted The Declaration of Independence, the U. S. Constitution, and the systems of representative government and courts that accompanied it.

Many of the infamous “bloodthirsty” Vikings settled in England and Ireland and became farmers. Their marauding lifestyle was more of a necessity because Scandinavia is a poor place to grow crops.

I think the difference here is between using the iconography of the pillagers vs that of the pillaged? 

The pillagers perhap don't feel exploited by it...?

On the other hand, I can't think of any team called The Horde.

You think Vikings are bad? Lions commit murder as a way of life. When a male lion joins a new pride, he slaughters all the cubs. The cubs! They also partake in cannibalism. Digusting. 

And yet all this melange arrived at this moment glistening in perfection.

Chief was an honorific, and 'redskin' was a slur. It's not that hard to see that one connotes something positive, a kind of status, the other is derogatory. (Saying that someone somewhere called themselves that is like saying that Black people call themselves the 'n' word, which you'll hear some. . . people do. That doesn't. . . quite give you the right to call your sports team that, obvs!) 

Lots of our history is fraught, and you can't go back and change it, but you can address stuff that's egregious. The fact that the redskins were in Washington, well. . . 

I've lived long enough with the idea of the Seminoles, for example, to think that naming your team after a local indigenous group, especially one that struggled to retain their place and customs, is really pretty decent. Chiefs and redskins are not creative or compelling, anyway, crying out loud. People willing to get ornery about retaining them are usually bringing some reactionary political feelings along with them. Misplaced. 

Chief is a French word that just means "boss" more or less.  So KC could pull back some of the Native American connections and go along just fine, if they felt like it or were compelled to.

I supported the change but commanders was a terrible alternative.  

My favorite part is the nfl got up in arms about "Redskins" but no problem with KC having war chants and a fan bang a giant drum before every game. It was 1000 percent about Dan Snyder, and KC is proof of that.