50 U.S. Senators Request Name Change For Redskins

[FWS]

U.S. senators send letters to Goodell

By Darren Rovell | ESPN.com
May 22, 2014

Letters signed by 50 U.S. senators urging the league to change the Washington Redskins name were sent on Thursday to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

The senators draw a parallel between the NBA's no-tolerance policy regarding the racist comments made by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and asks the NFL to act similarly.

[+] EnlargeDan Snyder
AP Photo/Manuel Balce CenetaRedskins owner Daniel Snyder has been steadfast in his stance that he will not change his team's nickname.

"Today, we urge you and the National Football League to send the same clear message as the NBA did: that racism and bigotry have no place in professional sports," the senators write. "It's time for the NFL to endorse a name change for the Washington, D.C. football team.

"The despicable comments made by Mr. Sterling have opened up a national conversation about race relations. We believe this conversation is an opportunity for the NFL to take action to remove the racial slur from the name of one of its marquee franchises."

Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has opposed the name change, and his team has launched its own public relations campaign issuing comments by Native Americans that continue to support the name.

The NFL has stood behind Snyder and issued its own response Thursday to the news of the senators' letter.

"We have not received the letter, but the NFL has long demonstrated a commitment to progressive leadership on issues of diversity and inclusion, both on and off the field," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said in a statement. "The intent of the team's name has always been to present a strong, positive and respectful image. The team name is not used by the team or the NFL in any other context, though we respect those that view it differently."

The Oneida Indian Nation, a tribe located in upstate New York that has been pushing for the name change through a national "Change the Mascot" campaign, applauded the senators' formal action while continuing to stay on its message.

"Washington team owner Dan Snyder and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell have claimed that using the R-word epithet somehow honors native peoples, but it is quite the opposite," Oneida Nation CEO Ray Halbritter said in a statement. "The R-word is a dictionary defined racial slur."

Halbritter said that the Redskins name is not a term of honor but "a malicious insult."

Jackie Pata, the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, also weighed in Thursday.

"The NFL is a global brand," Pata said in a statement released through Oneida. "But it wants to contribute to the positive image of the United States across the world rather than callously promoting discrimination against Native Americans, then it must stop promoting this slur and finally change the name."

One letter to the NFL was signed by 49 senators (only Democrats) and was not signed by Tim Kaine or Mark Warner, the two Democratic senators from Virginia.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) sent a separate letter to Goodell calling for the Redskins to change their name.

[Jarhead620]

I am so damn sick and tired of hearing from the pathetic legions of the perpetually offended. "Malicious insult, racial slur, R-word, phony analogy with Donald Sterling," give me a break and get over it.

My former wife is a full blood Native American from Isleta Pueblo. She is also a rabid Redskins fan. Our four children would laugh in your face if you suggested to them that the name of the Washington franchise was somehow an affront to their dignity.

I am gratified that my two Virginia U.S. Senators, both Democrats, opted out of this nonsense. Hopefully, they won't be drug back into it.

Jarhead

[leghorn]

Ive talked to a lot of natives in my area, and have yet to find ONE that is offended by the redskins name .

[FWS]

Know what ? I see no reason to not change the team name, it's been done before with that team. There is no positive legacy to the team name, which came from the owner George Preston Marshall in 1933, fact is he sounds like he was an a$$hole, ...........

Washington Redskins name controversy

History

The Washington Redskins were originally known as the Boston Braves. In 1933, co-owner George Preston Marshall changed the name to the Redskins, possibly in recognition of the then–head coach William Henry "Lone Star" Dietz, who claimed to be part Sioux. On July 6, 1933, the Boston Herald reported that "the change was made to avoid confusion with the Braves baseball team and the team that is to be coached by an Indian (Dietz)... with several Indian players."[8] Dietz's ancestry has been questioned by some scholars, as a birth certificate and census records recorded his parents as white. This does not preclude his having had Sioux ancestry as well.[9] In 1933, the Boston Braves moved from Braves Field, which they shared with baseball's Boston Braves, to Fenway Park, already occupied by the Boston Red Sox. The Washington Redskins name and logo, an image of a Native American, was officially registered in 1967.

George Preston Marshall

Legacy

His legacy includes the George Preston Marshall Foundation which serves the interests of children in the Washington, DC area. The $6 million he left had the qualification that none of it could be used "for any purpose which supports or employs the principle of racial integration."

Racism

Marshall has gained infamy for his intractable opposition to having African-Americans on his roster. According to professor Charles Ross, "For 24 years Marshall was identified as the leading racist in the NFL".[4] Though the league had previously had a sprinkling of black players, blacks were excluded from all NFL teams in 1933. While the rest of the league began signing individual blacks in 1946 and actually drafting blacks in 1949, Marshall held out until 1962 before signing a black player. Along with his own personal views, Marshall refused to sign African-American players because of a desire to appeal to Southern markets, which lacked an NFL team until Dallas entered the league in 1960.[5] His intractability was routinely mocked in Washington Post columns by legendary writer Shirley Povich, who sarcastically used terms from the civil rights movement and related court cases to describe games: for instance, he once wrote that Jim Brown "integrated" the end zone, making the score "separate but unequal".

Finally, in 1962, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy issued an ultimatum — unless Marshall signed a black player, the government would revoke the Redskins' 30-year lease on the year-old D.C. Stadium (now Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium), which had been paid for by government money and was owned by the Washington city government (which, then and now, is formally an arm of the federal government). Marshall's chief response was to make Ernie Davis, Syracuse's all-American running back, his number-one draft choice for 1962. Davis, however, demanded a trade, saying, "I won't play for that S.O.B."[citation needed] He got his wish, as the team sent him to Cleveland for All-Pro Bobby Mitchell. Mitchell was the first African American football player to play a game for the Redskins, and he played with the team for several years, initially at running back, but he made his biggest impact at wide receiver.George Preston MarshallGeorge Preston Marshall

[trappnman]

another example of govt wasting TIME and MONEY on nonsense!

that's a whole and separate point

I couldn't tell you if Redskins is offensive or not- would the Washington Niggers or the Washington Honkies or the Washington Kikes or the Washington Pollocks be the same, or different?

[Jarhead620]

Know what ? I see no reason to not change the team name

To stick it to the perpetually offended is reason enough for me.

Jarhead

[FWS]

To stick it to the perpetually offended is reason enough for me.

And let it drag on for years more..................

Seriously, I see no compelling reason to keep the current team name, there's no meaningful history or tradition behind the choice of the team name by the former owner, George Preston Marshall.

[trappincoyotes39]

FWS not up to you or I but up to the team owner and the NFL. No different than North Dakota using the term "fighting Sioux" they used that name for many years until recently and then it became something bad and evil. It yes a landmark name in college hockey and I can tell you not even many Indians have it a second thought, yet a small group found it offensive for what ever reason and kept pressing the issue, if I was President of UND I would have never changed the name, oh except of deth heat from the NCAA after many, many years of use. Ok ton use the name Sioux even though I can't remember the last Sioux Indian to play hockey there LOL. it is a tribute to the area and the people not something bad. Like the fighting irish, maybe people should boycott Notre dame and say some irish find the word fighting to be offensive as well?

All a joke and a means to flex some muscle in the name of offensive in nature. Or how about the another hockey tram called the fighting saints maybe the Pope should vilify that as well, how many saints fight? or is that offensive taking people inducted into saint good and label them all fighters.

[trappincoyotes39]

Also are the people of Oakland really raiders and pirates and thieves? man I find that offensive as well. Do away with the raiders as well?

[bogio]

Maybe we should just look at this team name as a tongue in cheek comment.

Beyond that I could give a shiit less.

[trappnman]

I like the name myself, because its football, and I didn't think further than that-

but didn't I ask a legitimate question, in my previous post?

[FWS]

FWS not up to you

If it was I'd rename them the Washington Androgenites, nothing racial there and it promotes gender ambiguity.


So again, what's the point of keeping a team name so many find a racial slur that has no meaningful history to it ?


1933 news article refutes cherished tale that Redskins were named to honor Indian coach

By Robert McCartney
Washington Post
May 28, 2014

Washington football team owner Dan Snyder urged the public a month ago to “focus on reality” rather than pester him for keeping a racial slur as his team’s name.

Here’s some reality for you, Dan. Since your patronizing comment, one-half the U.S. Senate has formally called on you to drop the name. It should have been a majority, but Virginia’s two senators shamefully refused to sign the letter. (Maryland’s two did the right thing.)

Then on Wednesday, 77 Native American tribes, Indian organizations and supporters wrote every National Football League player urging them to put their celebrity to good use by publicly supporting a name change.

The name’s critics also picked up a valuable assist from the National Basketball Association. It set a fine example by banning for life Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling after his racist views were made public in a leaked tape recording.

If the NBA can force an owner to sell a team, then surely the NFL can pressure Snyder to rename one.

The crescendo of opposition has drowned out Snyder’s effort to defuse the dispute by creating a charitable foundation to distribute items such as winter coats and earthmoving machinery to Indian tribes.

Of course, we all applaud Snyder for helping Native Americans.

But the events of recent weeks show the name controversy just keeps swelling, and there’s more to come.

A new article in a local law publication discloses a couple of fresh details about the name’s history and current legal status that will further discomfit Snyder.

Admittedly, the author of the article in the Washington Lawyer is hardly a disinterested party. He is attorney Jesse Witten, who represents a group of Indians who have filed a high-stakes lawsuit against the team in federal trademark court.

But the facts that Witten cites don’t appear to be in dispute.

In particular, he demolishes one of the team’s cherished myths about why the current name was selected in 1933.

At the time, the team was based in Boston and was called the Braves.

The team and NFL have claimed that then-owner George Preston Marshall picked the current name to honor the team’s Indian coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, and some Indian players on the squad.

There’s a lot of controversy over whether Dietz was actually a Native American. Witten’s article doesn’t resolve that.

But it does refute the team’s contention that the name was selected to celebrate Dietz.

The proof is in a July 6, 1933, edition of the Hartford Courant, which Witten unearthed after the sports Web site MMQB tipped him off about it.

The edition includes a short Associated Press dispatch quoting Marshall saying: “The fact that we have in our head coach, Lone Star Dietz, an Indian, together with several Indian players, has not, as may be suspected, inspired me to select the name Redskins.”

Instead, Marshall explains, he gave up “Braves” to avoid confusion with a Boston professional baseball team of the same name. He apparently picked the Redskins name so he could keep the existing Native American logo.

Witten also reports that lawyers at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have rejected at least 12 applications to register “redskins” as a trademark since 1993.

The reason: The word disparages Native Americans.

Some of the cases remain open, but the pattern does not bode well for the team in the current trademark case.

A panel of administrative law judges is preparing to issue a key ruling, which could come at any time. They’ll decide whether to cancel “Redskins” trademarks issued from 1967 to 1990.

(The team lost a virtually identical case before the trademark judges in the 1990s, only to win a reversal in federal court. An appellate court threw out the whole case on a technicality, which is why it’s up again.)

As I’ve written before, the judges might uphold the trademarks, on grounds that the word wasn’t disparaging before 1990 — even if it is today. Trademark law is weird that way.

But it seems reasonable to expect the Patent Office to be consistent.

The history of rejections is “extremely positive” for the Indian plaintiffs, according to Christine Haight Farley, who teaches trademark law at American University’s Washington College of Law.

“The rejections are very standard and are very well supported,” Farley said. “The examining attorneys cite numerous mainstream dictionaries. . . . The first and dominant meaning is a derogatory racial epithet.”

Even if Snyder loses the trademark decision, the appeals could last years. But a strong federal statement that the team name is offensive would be another significant morsel of “reality” for him to digest.

[trappincoyotes39]

Again only offensive to some not all. been in the league for years why the NEED to change it now? Whay makes 2014 the year to change? Just because a handful of people say so? he owns the team and the name he has the money to fight in court for many years of he so chooses to do so.

The NBA has written in their rules and laws of ownership to such! the NFL has endorsed and allowed redskin be used for many years. If not written into their ownership rules they could face a lawsuit for loss of revenue due to a name change forced upon and owner.

[FWS]

been in the league for years why the NEED to change it now? Whay makes 2014 the year to change?

Why not change a team name that so many see as a racial slur, which it clearly is ? Why not now ?

ust because a handful of people say so?

Seems to be more than a handful.

he owns the team

But not the league................

Again, there is no compelling reason to keep it, it has no meaningful history behind it.

They could change the name to something historically sporting, like from ancient Greece, 'The Olympians',

There are even visual representations that would lend themselves well to an eye catching team logo.

[trappnman]

more to the point- why would anyone want to defend a name that IS considered a racial slur?

Redskin IS deflamatory, IS a racial slur-

again I point to my examples of other team names that are considered racial slurs as well- are they just as appropriate to be used as well?

[FWS]

my examples of other team names that are considered racial slurs as well- are they just as appropriate to be used as well?

Change those too if they are offensive.

There's no real historical reason for the Kansas City Chiefs to be named such, Lamar Hunt just changed the team name from the Texans after he moved them from Dallas.

They should be renamed 'The Mules' in honor of MO's state animal.

[trappincoyotes39]

FWS again the league has no issue with it this is all outside pressure and yes a handful compaired to those who have no issues with them being called redskins. What historical presence does it need? many teams have a name for many reasons not all or many need to have historical history.

Cheif is also offensive? Really LOL. They will be called the KC chiefs for many years to come. Again why not change the raiders name as that is offensive as well? We already have the mules at University of central missouri they are the mules and the woman are the Jennie's.

Arrowhead stadium is a great place and has a lot of pride and the war drum and chant is a part of KC football history. There is no Indian disrespect by using the name chief or using the war drum all done in a manner to excite the crowd and show the passion the city has for its football team. The name comes from Roe Bartle the major at the time that helps convince hunt to move the team to KC and his nickname was the "chief".

if anyone has even the slightest interest in pro football arrowhead stadium should be on your list to visit , the tailgating is the best there is and the smell of BBQ in the parking lot and the fun and atmosphere are really something come 7am on a Sunday morning. KC is a football town no doubt about that. look at KC attendance versus royals games and one can see that the chiefs are KC.

[FWS]

again the league has no issue with it

That'll change............

What historical presence does it need?

Perhaps a name that isn't a racial slur ?


The battle over the Redskins’ name is about the exploitation of a stereotype for profit

By Courtland Milloy
Washington Post
Sunday, June 1, 2014

Taking on the persona of a free-ranging Indian warrior can be a welcome and seemingly harmless seasonal escape. I’ve been there, whooping it up from the stands at RFK Stadium in the 1970s to FedEx Field — until 2000, the year of my epiphany.

You might even say we were honoring Native Americans by ingesting the spirit of the “noble savage,” taking revenge on their behalf by figuratively scalping the Dallas Cowboys on a Thanksgiving afternoon.

In an intensified effort to shore up the discredited fantasy, team owner Daniel Snyder has taken to conjuring Indian support — trotting out fake Native Americans and manufacturing facts about the glorious origin of a team name widely regarded as a racial slur.

On Monday, at the request of Snyder’s representatives, the leader of a Nevada tribe was supposed to attend a news media event with Snyder. But the leader has since backed out, and now the hunt is on for a stand-in Snyder can trot out at another news media event scheduled for Wednesday.

To my friends who still embrace the Washington football team, especially those with whom I huddled in front of television sets on many a game day, do not be fooled. The fight over the team’s name is not some politically correct reflex to overly sensitive Native Americans, as Snyder would have you believe.

It is a rallying point, symbolic of a larger struggle against the most pernicious and enduring kind of American exploitation — racism in service to capitalism, the truly shameful principles upon which the nation was founded. To carry out the genocide of Native Americans and enslave Africans to work stolen lands, white capitalists facilitated the portrayal of both groups as less than human.

Respect, dignity and justice for all — that’s what the fight is about.

In a letter sent last week to more than 2,700 NFL players, the National Congress of American Indians and the Oneida Indian Nation called on the players to take a stand against a name that “does not honor people of color.” Instead, the letter says, the name “seeks to conceal a horrible segment of American history and the countless atrocities suffered by Native Americans.”

In garnering support for an unprecedented condemnation of the team name in the Senate last week, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) showed some of her colleagues a two-minute YouTube video about Native Americans. (Watch it here.)

The video, produced by the NCAI, humanizes not just Native Americans but all who watch it.

“It’s hard to explain just how insulting the team name is to people who don’t know the Native American population,” said Cantwell, whose district includes 29 tribes. By partnering with the economically powerful Indian tribes, the Seattle football team came up with a symbol — a traditional native design of a seahawk — that does both the city and the world-champion franchise proud.

The Seahawk players also have spine that our home team seems to lack.

Seahawk cornerback Richard Sherman recently was asked whether he thought NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would act as decisively as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver did in censuring Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for making racist remarks.

“No, I don’t,” Sherman said in an interview with Time magazine. “Because we have an NFL team called the ‘Redskins.’ I don’t think the NFL really is as concerned as they show. The NFL is more of a bottom-line league. If it doesn’t affect their bottom line, they’re not as concerned.”

The governing body of United Church of Christ congregations in the Mid-Atlantic has proposed boycotting the Washington football games and not buying products with the team logo. That is the way to go. Snyder’s efforts — such as changing the color of the Indian on the helmet from bright red to mud brown — just don’t cut it.

In 1970, more than 3,000 schools and sports teams had Indian mascots; today there are fewer than 900.

“We’ve had better luck with teams affiliated with schools because kids are involved and people have priorities other than money,” said Suzan Harjo, a District resident and Cheyenne and Muscogee Indian who had been the lead plaintiff in a decades-long legal fight to change the name of her hometown football team.

My attitude about the team name changed after meeting Harjo at a rally for the team more than 14 years ago. Chief Zee, a black man who dressed in fake Native American garb and played the role of a mascot, was whooping it up and came over to greet her.

He did not notice her Native American heritage and the authenticity of her dress, jewelry and identity. His very presence was mocking, no honor in it at all. Harjo responded with a polite smile, far more tolerant than I would have been if a white man in blackface had done the same to me.

When Snyder tweeted for fans to show their pride in the team name last week, opponents tweeted back their disgust, using the hashtag #rightsideofhistory.

Better that it read #rightnow.

[trappincoyotes39]

You keep brining up history yet doesn't matter they don't use it in such a way and has history as the teams name. So let them continue on as they don't use it in an offensive manner. The rest is pure babble.

let's get rid of the Atlanta braves, the pirates, white sox because that could be seen as offensive as well, what happened to black soxs? Just silly unless used I. An offensive nature.

[trappnman]

history simstory!

if the name offends people because its a racial slur- the answer seems clear

Washington Niggers- history, galore- why NOT?

black soxs were never a team name, was a nickname given from throwing the World Series