Daniel Snyder is the white-skinned owner of Washington's pro football team, the Redskins. Several of the team's marquee players include Laveranues Coles, a black-skinned wide receiver, and Patrick Ramsey, a white-skinned quarterback. Twice this season, Washington will face a tough Dallas defense featuring yellow-skinned linebacker Dat Nguyen.
Why specifically mention the players' skin colors? It's obvious, isn't it? Labeling the players by skin color honors them and their racial heritage. Blacks and whites have contributed so much to our country's history that we should recognize their achievements by naming sports teams after them. How about the Green Bay Palefaces, the Chicago Jews, or the New York Negroes?
Actually, that would raise controversy. After all, imagine the other ethnicities that would demand to be honored in the same way. We'd have Chinese people insisting that they have a team named after them, perhaps with a mascot who carries chopsticks and does martial arts moves at halftime. Then, of course, the Japanese will clamor for a kimono-clad mascot who gives free sushi to fans 12-and-under at Jacksonville Japanese games.
Of course, all of these suggestions are offensive and ridiculous. Any American realizes that there is no tolerance in these names, and that they most certainly are not honorifics that ennoble the group being ecognized."" Why, then, is there so little outrage when a football team, particularly one in our nation's capital, uses a name that Native Americans liken to the N-word for African Americans?
In 1992, a coalition of Native Americans led by Suzan Shown Harjo filed a lawsuit under the Lanham Act, which prohibits the registration of names that are ""disparaging, scandalous, contemptuous or disreputable."" The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board sided with Harjo and agreed to invalidate the team's trademark on the name. But last week, on appeal, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the earlier decision was based on flawed and incomplete data, and allowed the team continued use of the trademark.
Kollar-Kotelly based her decision on two key factors. The first is that the original decision was influenced by a survey of 300 Native Americans, of whom a majority found the term ""redskin"" offensive. The judge did not think 300 people constituted a statistically significant sample size.
In her decision, she wrote, ""There is no evidence in the record that addresses whether the use of the term 'redskin(s)' in the context of a football team ... would be viewed by a substantial composite of Native Americans, in the relevant time frame, as disparaging,"" [emphasis added].
This, of course, despite the fact that Harjo points out, ""The term, R*dsk*n, has despicable origins ... [in] the practice of paying bounties for the bloody red skins and scalps as evidence of Indian kill."" Apparently more than ""only"" 300 Native Americans have to be offended by this to compel a change.
Second, Kollar-Kotelly claimed that the coalition waited too long to file suit--a full quarter century after the trademark had been granted. She argued that in those 25 years, the Redskins spent millions marketing their brand. To compel them to brand a new image and logo would, she wrote, be a form of ""economic prejudice.""
Patti Loew, a professor in UW's Life Sciences Communication program who is of Ojibwe descent, doesn't understand Kollar-Kotelly's logic. ""I didn't realize there was a statute of limitations on discrimination, racism and exploitation of cultural icons,"" she said.
Okay, so Redskins is clearly offensive. But what about more culturally sensitive team names, like the Atlanta Braves or Cleveland Indians? Surely Native Americans feel honored by recognition in a form like that?
""Team names are objects,"" Loew said. ""Indians are people. Being labeled like this objectifies them.""
But Packers, Raiders and Cowboys are people too.
""Those are occupations,"" said Loew, ""not races."" Every national organization of Native Americans is on record as stating it deplores the use of any Native American term as a sports mascot. And since it is they who the team owners claim to ""honor,"" clearly their opinion should be the deciding factor.
In a related issue, Rush Limbaugh was forced out of his role as an ESPN football analyst. He had charged that NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated and was given repeated opportunities only because the NFL wants to see black quarterbacks succeed. An ill advised comment, yes. But racist? Well, the comment is race-related, but that doesn't necessarily make it racist.
Still, the message seems to be: make a slightly questionable comment about a black man and lose your job. But refer to Native Americans by a pejorative that's as offensive to them as the N-word is to African Americans, and our courts will back you up.
Stanford University already replaced ""Indian"" with ""Cardinal,"" and countless other colleges and high schools have done likewise. It's time for Daniel Snyder to put ethics ahead of corporate marketing interests and repeal the most racist name in all of American sports.
