The word “Redskins” is not cool

Given the amount of time society spends nit-picking on things which may or may not be barely sexist, racist, homophobic, or otherwise offensive, the activist community has some enormous blind spots. Take the entire concept of cheerleading, which, for those unfamiliar, is the tradition of women doing splits in tiny skirts while the big strong men do big strong man stuff. NFL cheerleading “uniforms” look like this now. I find it strange that men have to fight the urge to get an erection when watching an NFL game while Ellen rants about a pen being marketed towards women. This is either a double-standard or a zero-standard, not sure which.

At the same time, the race card is played often enough these days to make me, a black dude, sort of tired of it being played sometimes. What keeps me optimistic, though, is that people are still getting pissed off when racially insensitive or backwards things happen in our world, which – again, as a black dude – gives me the hope that clear racism will soon be a thing of the past.

I’ve qualified those sentences as a coming from a black dude because things remain outrageously fucked for people who didn’t have an MLK, a Malcolm X, an Obama, or the NBA. I need everyone to wrap their brains around the fact that there is a team called the Washington Redskins. And the Cleveland Indians. And the Florida Seminoles. Native Americans exist most often in our minds as the cute, painted-up, feathered mascots that represent our multi-million dollar sports franchises, yet they actually exist in the poorest, most decrepit parts of the United States. Why? American settlers killed most of them, and sent the rest to oscillate in a wondrous cycle of addiction and poverty amongst arid, infertile, desolate land.

Let me hone in on the Redskins. It sickens me that I’ve been able to overlook such a heinous word for so long. The Cleveland Indians are at least named after the incorrect-yet-now-somewhat-accepted term for Native Americans, and the Florida Seminoles after an actual Indian – excuse me – Native American tribe. I can live with that. (I can’t, and for a ton of reasons, but that sentence works there). But naming a franchise the “Redskins” isn’t just making the decision that you’re going to trivialize the existence of an ethnic group which you’ve historically all but extinguished, it’s attaching a disgusting generalization to their people via a racist slur which is shocking in its overtness. It’s the cherry on the icing of a sundae of fuck you, give us your land, go to South Dakota, and run around our stadium on a buffalo or something.

Oh and don’t stare at the cheerleaders, please. We know its tempting. *guffaw, guffaw*

The Redskins owner saying “We will NEVER change the name” is a statement which should be met by a beer bottle being broken over his head. And ideally, the beer bottle would be handed over by a Native American teen who has seen his family suffer through a long history of alcoholism in a land where football matters more than welfare. The extent to which the struggle of the 21st century Native American is underrated saddens me profoundly, and the stubbornness to which people can cling to racial slurs which mock them ignites emotions I’d rather not describe here.

Let’s just say I feel very negatively. And also feel that the United States is a fucked up place if our nation’s capital can root for a team whose name ridicules people that were oppressed and killed to found it. Classy stuff.

-James

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