Goodbye Redskins and Indians and Braves and Chiefs

[Prison Bitch]

Rick Reilly, Columnist ESPN


Besides, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last week that if "even one person is offended" on this issue, we need to "listen."

One person?

Got it. Guess we need to listen to people who are offended by the Kansas City Chiefs' name, too. That's one that offends my father-in-law. "You see some little guy wearing a headdress made of chicken feathers," he says, "painting his face up, making a mockery of us. I hate that. Those are things you earn."



Doesn't matter. The 81-year-old Washington Redskins name is falling, and everybody better get out of the way. For the majority of Native Americans who don't care, we'll care for them. For the Native Americans who haven't asked for help, we're glad to give it to them.

Trust us. We know what's best. We'll take this away for your own good, and put up barriers that protect you from ever being harmed again.

Kind of like a reservation.


http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/96...ot-easy-sounds

[Raiderhater]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

How do you poll the dead?

[BIG_DADDY]

Originally Posted by stevieray

buuut buuut i start game threads for a team with a horse called warpaint....

I actually thought he might post something thought provoking after claiming there are nations of Indians all united in their effort to be offended. I have no personal experience to draw from here. I have known very few American Indians and it only got brought up once.

[stevieray]

Originally Posted by alanm

Native Americans aren't even native to America. They migrated from Asia.

and all tribes were peaceful...

[Cephalic Trauma]

Originally Posted by Raiderhader

Historical context adds to the charge of a racial slur. That's thig's point.

[stevieray]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

Historical context adds to the charge of a racial slur. That's thig's point.

don't call them scalps!

oh the humanity!

[Anyong Bluth]

Redskins I get, the Chiefs isn't even offensive.
Indians - maybe since they aren't actually Indian, and Braves seems pretty mild to me unless there is some historical reference that it's a derogatory term, which I don't think that's the case.

[Raiderhater]

Originally Posted by Cephalic Trauma

Historical context adds to the charge of a racial slur. That's thig's point.

Funny thing about history, it's never as one sided as people like to make it out to be.

[tomahawk kid]

Originally Posted by loochy

I'm offended by Goodell being a douche and trying to ruin football

This - so much of this.

[tomahawk kid]

Also, the sooner Rick Reily takes a freight train to the teeth, the better.

I can think of about a billion better uses for the oxygen he's currently wasting.

[InChiefsHeaven]

We will rename our team...

[Whosurdaddy]

It is a racist name. The only reason it's still called the Redskins is because there aren't enough indians that even exist anymore. Lets put it this way, If there was even a little more innocuous team name that wasn't even straight forward in it's racism like the "South Carolina first to seceders" we all know how it would go down with the unified protests and such amongst the black community.

After North America was settled there was an 80% drop in the Native american population within a 100 years. Genocide, forced migration, systematic loss of cultural heritage ensured that many Native Americans were treated as bad as early blacks. The ramifications to this day shows that many indians that attempted to keep some identity still live on reservations that are some of the poorest places in the western hemisphere with poverty rates in the range of subsaharan africa. That is so shitty, and I don't feel any americans should live like that. There is no rainbow push for them, they are some of the least supported americans and it's not shocking at all that people say there aren't that many native americans against it. There aren't many left period.

I don't think it's pussification of america, it's just acceptable racism and an unwanted reminder of being shitty to other people because there really isn't anything they can do about it.

[blaise]

Originally Posted by Thig Lyfe

No, we read it the same way. I know exactly what Reilly's doing. It's bullshit.

It's the "I have a [Native American] friend" defense. It's "here are some cherrypicked & dubiously conducted polls that don't acknowledge the entire nations of Native people who have very recently asked that the name be changed." It's reducto ad absurdium; comparing the Redskins (a racial slur against a historically oppressed people) to the Saints, Angels, Wizards, Fighting Irish (none of which are racial slurs against historically oppressed people) is idiotic. An atheist would be silly to be offended by the Saints or Angels. But believe it or not, there is a line. And that line is racial slurs used against an historically oppressed peoples.

This column is every single tired old argument against changing the Redskins name all rolled into one big ball of shit. And you people are acting like he's said something new and interesting and (I'm gonna puke) courageous.

Some Native Americans might not have a problem with the word. Fine. That's not why we should be changing it. We should be changing it because it's a ****ing disgusting reminder of our ****ing disgusting treatment of the people who were here before us. And we see fit to honor that disgusting treatment by slapping a racial slur on a football jersey. Jesus ****ing Christ, how is this so ****ing hard for some of you?

So the high schools he referenced should change their names, too.

[Tombstone RJ]

meh, don't give in to the liberals who think that a football team's name really matters. If one person is offended, tell that person to grow up.

[Cephalic Trauma]

Originally Posted by Raiderhader

Funny thing about history, it's never as one sided as people like to make it out to be.

The resulting oppression was about as one-sided as possible.

On a continuum scale from 0-99, it was about a 98.

[Whosurdaddy]

Originally Posted by blaise

So the high schools he referenced should change their names, too.

Would an all Black team that is "taking back the N-word" and utilizing it as their team name be required to in a PC world? Yes.