Woman behind the Redskins name change says the Chiefs should be on guard

[BigRedChief]

The fight took a monumental shift at a protest nine years at Arrowhead Stadium and it’s about to come full circle. No matter what you think of the issue, it will soon be ubiquitous in and around Kansas City’s greatest obsession other than barbecue.

The Chiefs are aware of it, and are preparing accordingly.


Back in 2005, a group calling itself Not In Our Honor protested before the Chiefs played Washington. The protesters were predominately American Indians, united in their anger over what they perceived as offensive stereotypes passed off as nicknames for sports teams. An older woman, Suzan Harjo, one of the leaders of the protest, met a younger woman named Amanda Blackhorse, then a student at Kansas.

They bonded over their passion for the issue, and that’s how the case known as Blackhorse et al v. Pro-Football Inc. came to be. Last week the plaintiffs prevailed when the United States Patent and Trademark Office canceled the trademarks of the Washington Redskins.


The case is under appeal, but you should know that the woman who took on and (at least for the moment) defeated the corporate entity that owns Washington’s NFL team would like to see the same type of case brought against the Chiefs.
As she says, the spark that started back in 2005 at Arrowhead has created a fire that will probably soon return.


“What happens there, it’s just insane the things they allow to go on,” Blackhorse says of the Chiefs and Arrowhead. “They are definitely in the group (of offensive teams), for sure.”


For now, the Chiefs are publicly silent on this. But they know the fight is likely coming, and they hope a few things work in their favor — most notably that it’s tough to compare their nickname with the one in Washington that is a dictionary-defined racial slur. Blackhorse’s group has also protested baseball’s Cleveland Indians, and that team has greatly scaled back its use of the cartoonish Chief Wahoo logo.


The Chiefs have similarly scaled back some of their more obvious plays on Indian stereotypes, and they hope they have some other advantages when the fight comes. The team is named after H. Roe Bartle, the mayor who was key in Kansas City landing the team from Dallas in 1962. Bartle’s nickname was “The Chief.”


The team stopped using a man dressed in traditional headgear as a mascot during pregame festivities many years ago. In the early 1990s, many of the Chiefs’ defensive players posed for a poster that today both looks absolutely ridiculous and would never be recreated.
The team does, however, play the tomahawk chop during games and welcomes fans in headgear and other stereotypes of Native American dress.


Those are some of the parts of the game day experience that Blackhorse calls “insane,” and why she expects a fight that’s gaining momentum and support nationally to come to Kansas City.


She knows that the vast majority of Chiefs fans will oppose her, but she also knows that the vast majority of fans in Washington opposed her, as well.


She says there is “no middle ground with this issue,” that once an ethnic group is used as a nickname for a sports team, the people in that ethic group lose control of their identity and humanity.


“I don’t want people to think I’m going around pointing fingers, like, ‘You’re a racist, you’re a racist, you’re a racist,’ ” she says. “That’s not the point. The point is we’re offended. You can love Native Americans to death. You can have admiration, love what we do, how we are, whatever, and still (hijack) our culture without understanding it that way.”


Wherever you stand on this issue, there is no denying that Blackhorse’s side is making progress. Teams are sensitive to and aware of perpetuating stereotypes so much more than in the past, in response to public sentiment.


The issue is further complicated by context, that this is a fight centered around Indians, who make up about 1 percent of the nation’s population and who, in Blackhorse’s words, “are invisible sometimes to people.”
That makes getting the message out a bit more difficult. A group of people that feels offended by widespread stereotyping isn’t big enough to get critical mass on its own.


That’s why Blackhorse says the movement needs the help of non-Indians, and part of why she’s so encouraged by developments in Congress and with the trademark case.


There is a lot of momentum here, which can be dangerous for teams like the Chiefs that will likely soon find themselves directly in the fight.
“I’m not sure there’s anything the (Chiefs) can do at this point other than look for another name,” Blackhorse says. “They could be the team that says, ‘You know what? We understand the issue and we don’t want to be Dan Snyder and fight this in court forever. We want to do the right thing and move forward and avoid this entire battle.’ I’m sure fans will be upset, but still, that’s doing the right thing.


“If they want to be sensitive to Native American people, that’s the thing to do.”

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt...#storylink=cpy

Early 90's

[SPATCH]

Originally Posted by ram29jackson

I forgot to put that its not my quote. I took it from another forum

Literally never stop posting.

[Crying Ramtard]

Originally Posted by SPATCH

Literally never stop posting.

I don't get it ?

[Dr. Van Halen]

Originally Posted by ram29jackson

5 and 10 years and they still haven't graduated from its racist wah wah with out a single bit of proof or evidence that would lead to that being any form of a fact.

the Smithsonian found nothing to prove Redskins was used by whites as a negative term throughout history.

This isn't true. People within the Smithsonian disagree about the origins of the term. They do not disagree that it became very racist.

"from The Daily Republican newspaper in Winona, Minnesota from Sept. 24, 1863. It reads:

'The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.'"

I don't think this is something to be proud of or defend.

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

How lonely does one have to be to be really excited to see a woman at a horse during a sporting event.

Whatever they have to do to make you forget how awful the Chiefs are.

Not as lonely as a guy who spams a message board with soccer shit. This maybe surprising to you but most guys like tits.

[MOhillbilly]

I'm gonna sue Branson.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by Dr. Van Halen

This isn't true. People within the Smithsonian disagree about the origins of the term. They do not disagree that it became very racist.

"from The Daily Republican newspaper in Winona, Minnesota from Sept. 24, 1863. It reads:

'The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.'"

I don't think this is something to be proud of or defend.

Originally Posted by KC native

Yes, let's just ignore how language evolves and is used today.

[Crying Ramtard]

Originally Posted by Dr. Van Halen

This isn't true. People within the Smithsonian disagree about the origins of the term. They do not disagree that it became very racist.

"from The Daily Republican newspaper in Winona, Minnesota from Sept. 24, 1863. It reads:

'The State reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.'"

I don't think this is something to be proud of or defend.

nor is something from 1863 in print once worth changing a teams name for or claiming nationwide hurt. Its obviously never been a widely used negative term if the vast majority of actual Indians don't give a damn. How is defining what color skin someone has so you know who they are talking about a racist term. Indians time and again called themselves red skins in history verbally and in print so its not a valid issue worth wasting countless legal hours and money

[Crying Ramtard]

http://m.washingtonpost.com/opinions...8ce_story.html

The government decided that ‘Redskins’ bothers you

Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo who successfully moved a federal agency to withdraw trademark protections from the Washington Redskins because it considers the team’s name derogatory, lives on a reservation where Navajos root for the Red Mesa High School Redskins. She opposes this name; the Native Americans who picked and retain it evidently do not.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office acted on a 1946 law banning trademarks that “may disparage” persons. “May” gives the agency latitude to disregard evidence regarding how many people actually feel disparaged or feel that others should feel disparaged. Blackhorse speaks of “the majority of Native American people who have spoken out on this.” This would seem implausible even if a 2004 poll had not found that 90 percent of Native Americans were not offended by the Redskins’ name. A 2013 AP-GfK poll showed that 79 percent of Americans of all ethnicities opposed changing it, and just 18 percent of “nonwhite football fans” favored changing it.

The federal agency acted in the absence of general or Native American revulsion about “Redskins,” and probably because of this absence. Are the Americans who are paying attention to this controversy comfortable with government saying, in effect, that if people are not offended, they should be, so government must decide what uses of language should be punished?

In today’s regulatory state, agencies often do pretty much as they please, exercising discretion unconstrained by law.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley notes that in 2004 the Federal Election Commission held that the anti-George W. Bush movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” did not need to be regulated as an “electioneering communication” but in 2008 held that the hostile “Hillary: The Movie” was such a communication. In the regulatory state, the rule of law is the rule that law barely limits regulators’ discretion.






Although the death penalty clearly was not considered a “cruel and unusual” punishment when the Eighth Amendment proscription of such punishments was adopted, perhaps society’s “evolving standards of decency” have brought this punishment under the proscription. Standards of decency do evolve: No sports team launched today would select the name “Redskins.” Although Thomas Sowell is correct that “some people are in the business of being offended, just as Campbell is in the business of making soup,” the fact that some people are professionally indignant does not mean offense may be given promiscuously to others.




She says “someone” once told her that teams’ mascots “are meant to be ridiculed,” “to be toyed with,” “to be pushed around and disrespected” and “have stuff thrown at them.” She should supplement the opinion of that someone with information from persons more knowledgeable. But she considers “any team name that references Native Americans” an injurious “appropriation of our culture.” Has an “appropriation” been committed by the University of Utah and Florida State University even though they have the approval of the respective tribes for their teams’ nicknames, the Utes and Seminoles?

William Voegeli, a senior editor of the Claremont Review of Books, writes that the kerfuffle over an NFL team’s name involves serious matters. They include comity in a diverse nation, civil discourse, and “not only how we make decisions, but how we decide what needs to be decided, and who will do the deciding.”




When two Oregon bakers chose, for religious reasons, not to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding, an Oregon government official explained why tolerance meant coercing the bakers: “The goal is to rehabilitate.” Tolerance required declaring the bakers’ beliefs and practices intolerable. We are going to discover whether a society can be congenial while its government is being coercive regarding wedding cakes and team names.

[007]

Originally Posted by Rausch

The ****ing word CHIEF is not native american.

Dwell on that $3it...

Damn straight chief.

[Chief Roundup]

Originally Posted by Rausch

The ****ing word CHIEF is not native american.

Dwell on that $3it...

Really I would like to see that confirmed.
Because when Columbus came over there were no Chiefs on his boat. Before we came to America there was not a Chief of anything that I am aware of.

[007]

This has me pulling all my Chiefs garb out of offseason dormancy early.

[007]

Originally Posted by Chief Roundup

Really I would like to see that confirmed.
Because when Columbus came over there were no Chiefs on his boat. Before we came to America there was not a Chief of anything that I am aware of.

Been covered several times in this thread. Feel free to go find it.

[mikey23545]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

You....

Seem to spend a lot of time in your life thinking about liberals.

You...

Seem to spend a lot of time in your miserable little life worried about what I think...

Go back to rubbing other guy's soccer balls...

[Dr. Van Halen]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

Originally Posted by ram29jackson

nor is something from 1863 in print once worth changing a teams name for or claiming nationwide hurt. Its obviously never been a widely used negative term if the vast majority of actual Indians don't give a damn. How is defining what color skin someone has so you know who they are talking about a racist term. Indians time and again called themselves red skins in history verbally and in print so its not a valid issue worth wasting countless legal hours and money

No, the 1863 piece marks the change in primary usage from self-identification to racism. By the time the 1900's roll around, you have books like Redskin Rimes and cartoons and westerns using the word (usually) in a derogatory way.

From what I've read, however, I do think it's unlikely the team owner (a notorious racist himself) meant the team name to be racist. I think he saw it as just a word that was used -- and I think I can buy the idea that the team name was meant to honor a Revolutionary War figure named Tammany.

But the word is considered racist. No way around it. It's like how sometimes people would refer to the runaway slave in Huckleberry Finn as "N-word Jim." It was just a word that was used at the time, but we can now acknowledge that it's usage is derogatory and we don't use it.

The Chiefs name is safe. It's not a slur. It's has no history of being a slur. I found it telling that this woman suggested that if the Chiefs changed their name as an act of good faith, then maybe it would force the Redskins to change their name. Chiefs is safe.

[Red Brooklyn]

Originally Posted by Chief Roundup

Really I would like to see that confirmed.
Because when Columbus came over there were no Chiefs on his boat. Before we came to America there was not a Chief of anything that I am aware of.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chief

http://answers.google.com/answers/th...id/787017.html

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...7113658AAg8tIw