Should The Washington Redskins Change Their Team Name?
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1. Should the Redskins change their team name? Why or why not?
2. If yes, what does that mean for other controversial team names (ex. Blackhawks)?
3. If the term only offends a small amount of people, is that enough to make them change the name?
4. Does it matter whether the use of a disparaging term has good intentions?
I feel like the author comes at this topic with a great deal of bitterness and childness. No well respected sports writer begins a piece saying that he’ll defend his argument with “meaningful facts”. Wouldn’t the author only want to include “meaningful facts” in order to make his argument as strong as possible? That aside, I think that the redskins should change their name because some consider the team name to be a racial slur. Regardless of where you come from, I don’t think that it’s right to cheer on a team by using a racial slur. I think that the main reason that the name has not yet changed is because Native Americans make up a small percentage of the population. I believe that you can be a redskins fan without being a supporter of the name. To me, the players and the team feel like two separate things that can exist together if we choose to group them together, but we do not necessarily have to. When renaming controversial teams, I do not think that team names should be lumped into one big pile. Each team can choose to work through a renaming process on their own, rather than saying that all controversial teams need to change now. A bureaucratic mandate would just make plenty of fans unhappy, and wouldn’t solve the issue in the end. While it is true that the term only offends a small group of people, the magnitude of the offense is rather large. The National Congress of American Indians has been in support of a name change for the Redskins for several years, and protests have been occurring over the past several years. Good intentions are important, but the impact also needs to be considered; In this case, the impact severely outweighs the intent.
ReplyDeleteI don't think they should have to change the name of their team. I believe this, because it even says in the post their intentions were to clear up confusion within the city between two team names, not to create a racial slur. I can recognize and see that it could be offensive to some people, but I think they need to understand the history behind the name. As well as this, there are schools that have predominant populations that are Native Americans with sports teams named the redskins and these populations are not offended. If the majority of the Native American population is not being offended, I do not believe that it is fair that one small group of people can have the power to talk above those people and change a whole huge organization. It can be said about other sports teams that their names are inappropriate and need to be changed. So if one small group of people were able to make a change, I think their would be a lot of changes to many teams around sports.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that the Redskins should be forced to re name there team. This is because the name does not have any bad intensions with it, and only a minority of the indian population is offended by this. I understand the fact that this is a racial slur directed to native americans, but if most native americans do not find any offense from the word, then the organization should not be forced to change the name. The fact that schools predominately attended by Native Americans have redskins as there mascot shows the lack of power the word holds in this day and age, thus showing us that the name Redskins is not a name that needs to be changed now.
ReplyDeleteI do believe the Washington Redskins should change their name, even if it only affects a small group of people. There is a negative connotation behind the name "Redskin", compared to other sports franchises that use Native American references as their mascots or team names. There is a significant difference in naming yourself after a Native American tribe compared to using a derogatory term as your team's mascot. You can talk all you want about the history behind the Washington football franchise, but if you change the name you're not changing the history of the team. The Oklahoma City Thunder are still very much connected to the Seattle Supersonics despite being in a different city with a different name. We've taken so much away from all Native Americans throughout our history, maybe we should just give them one thing back.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that the Washington Redskins should change their team name. This is because there are no bad intentions with the name. They whole history of the team is Redskins and for them to change it would hurt the franchise history. I also think that if they were to change their name, teams like the Chicago Blackhawks, Kansas City Chiefs, and Cleveland Indians would also have to change their names. I think this would cause a lot of disappointment to the owners of these teams and players that have played on it.
ReplyDeleteThe Washington Redskins should not change their name. First of all, plenty of native American people have come out and said that it is not racist. It is like saying any team that talks about a certain culture like the Cleveland Indians, or Kanas City Chiefs would have to change their names. Having these names is not meant to be racist. Their name is a part of their organizations past and while I understand it could be seen as racist and rude, I do not believe they should change their name.
ReplyDeleteThe Redskins definitely should change their name. Although there was no bad intent in the original creation of the name, the fact is that people are taking offense to it today, and for that reason the team must respect others and change the name. I think changing the redskins name is a good start to moving sports towards non-discriminatory names, but definitely not an end. If in the future other team names are seen as completely discriminatory, then maybe then it should be considered to changing the name. But in this day and age, only redskins are being looked at, so only they need to change their name. Honestly it matters the amount of people it offends. Clearly the amount of people offended by the redskins is large enough to get attention to it, so that needs to change. But if the offense to a group to small to get attention, then there is no reason to change the name.
ReplyDeleteI think the Redskins should not have to change their name because they are not the only team that has an indian like name. The logo on the Cleveland Indians hat is called Chief Wahoo. So they are not the only team with a name like this. Also other teams aren't being forced to change their name and the names aren't that bad. Almost every professional league has a team with a name like this.
ReplyDeleteI think the redskins do not need to change their name. This is because the redskins do not have bad intentions with the team name. They are not trying to offend anyone. In addition, the redskins have been called this name for many years and it has been a staple of their organization. They are not the only team with a name like that, there are many high school, college, and professional teams with that type of name.
ReplyDeleteI do think Washington should change their name. Their current name is not only an offensive slang term to native americans, the Front Office never recieved permission from a cheif of somesort to name it that in the first place. However, the Cleveland Indians and Chicago Blackhawks both recived permission from a cheif to name their team those names. Washington should have never even thought about naming their team such an offensive term, and must be forced to change it by the NFL.
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