The End Of The Redskins

On Monday a seismic shift in professional sports took place when the NFL's Washington franchise announced they were dropping the name Redskins as their mascot. Long criticized for keeping what is an obvious racial slur (equivalent, in my mind, to calling black people darkies) owner Daniel Snyder, who had once said the name would never change, had too much pressure from sponsors, particularly FedEx, whose name is on the stadium.

While the team ponders a new name, it will be interesting to see if there is any domino effect. The Cleveland Indians are now in the hot seat. A few years ago they finally dropped the racist caricature Chief Wahoo, and are now under the gun to replace their name. Other teams are not budging, particularly the Atlanta Braves, who are keeping the name but taking a long look at the "Tomahawk Chop," a chant and gesture that some find offensive. It would be impossible to stop the fans from doing this, but they can stop handing out foam tomahawks that encourage it.

The use of races as mascots and the controversy around them go back a long way. Dartmouth College used to be called the Indians, but in the '70s dropped the name in favor of the inoffensive Big Green. This was not universally hailed--right wing students who founded The Dartmouth Review, who spawned such vile figures as Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza, used the phrase "The Indian Will Never Die" as a motto. I suppose they were convinced political correctness had run amok, but really, if a sizable group of people are upset by something, what's the harm in changing it?

There does seem to be a line--why get rid of Redskins and Indians, but keep Braves or Chiefs? I suppose the former represent a race, while the latter represents a type of individual. Chiefs is okay, I guess, if Kings is. And the use of a specific Indian, such as with the Chicago Black Hawks or Columbus Blue Jackets of the NHL, seems to be taken as a token of respect. But the use of a specific tribe name, such as the Florida State Seminoles, is problematic (they are the originators of the Tomahawk Chop).

I think this is all tied in with the retrospective look at history, with statues of Confederates coming down, and even esteemed figures like Woodrow Wilson having his name taken off a school at Princeton for his racist views. Where do we stop--should we rename Washington, D.C. or the state because Washington was a slaveholder? Probably not, but we can certainly rename forts named after Confederate generals, like Fort Bragg, named after Braxton Bragg, who was not only a traitor but a bad general.

I think Cleveland will bow to pressure, and I hope they will go back in time and resurrect the Spiders, which was the name of the Cleveland National League team of the 19th century. That team is notorious for posting a record in 1899 of 20-134, the worst record in baseball history, and were promptly folded (they were so bad because the owners of the team bought another team in St. Louis and sent all their best players there, prompting a rule that one entity couldn't own more than one team). Despite this notoriety, spiders are a criminally underused mascot--I think the only team that uses it are the University of Richmond Spiders.

Many names seem to be in contention for the Washington football club, such as Warriors, Americans, and even Red Clouds, which would be a show of "respect" for the actual Indian leader (why not Crazy Horses or Sitting Bulls?). But I would vote for Hogs, a reference to the great offensive line the team had in the 1980s, which had fans wearing pig noses.