I would agree with you if this was entirely a question of "cultural elites" deciding on this, but the best and most recent data we have polling actual Native Americans most of whom are not "cultural elites" indicates at least some dislike of the name.
I would agree with you if this was entirely a question of "cultural elites" deciding on this, but the best and most recent data we have polling actual Native Americans most of whom are not "cultural elites" indicates at least some dislike of the name.
The team had previously spend a lot of time and money justifying the name. There are plenty of Native Americans that are not offended by the name, there just seem to be a clear majority that are and that should be taken into account.
I really don't find the results of this poll all that compelling, just as I haven't with any other poll on this. If one poll of 1000 Native Americans only shows that 57% of those self-identifying as Native are offended then this is a total non-issue. If it was like 95% and there were multiple polls showing that over time and there was consensus that "Redskins" was comparable to universally offensive ethnic slurs then this would be obvious, but given the high level of ambiguity even among Natives then this doesn't seem like something that should be so clear.
I think the more compelling element is that there is a much higher rate for Native Americans living "traditional lifestyles" and living on reservations. Amongst self-identified native Americans you have a lot of people who falsely think they are part Native Americans or who are only a small percentage and don't have much connection to their tribe. Elizabeth Warren is a dime a dozen, especially in places like Oklahoma(where she grew up) and Texas. Many people falsely claim Native Americans ancestry. This makes it particularly difficult to actually tackle issues related to Native Americans. Who counts? One way of looking at it is that people who live on reservations and who practice traditional Native American lifestyles are unambiguously Native American.
What really gets lost in all of this though and even in how I am speaking about it is that really all of these opinions might be drastically different based on the tribe. As many have pointed out Redskin is used regularly by Native Americans in some geographic areas.
So yeah this is much more complex issue than maybe it seems at first. But what I want to convey is that there are two sides to this issue. Also that it very well could be categorized as "Virtue Signaling" but to a certain segment of the Native population they do seem to care.
Yeah - you're very good at making arguments, Kenny, but the very strongest cases I've heard about this just don't impress me much. What actually lifelong fans of the team prefer and what the owners decide is best for their bottomline seems like they should matter more than doing some poll to see what the majority of a particular group of Native Americans or Indians or indigenous people (they can't even agree on the non-offensive names which they prefer!) or multicultural-minded leftists want.
I actually like "First Nations" it's kind of the most accurate, it's just not used in the US.
"Native" is kind of strange because humans are not really native to anywhere except for a specific part of Africa, humans by definition move and relocate, get displaced, displace others. A lot of it is ugly stuff, but it's very human.
So "indigenous" doesn't really work either for the same reason. That seems like they are a plant or something.
"Indian" is widely used but laughably inaccurate and confusing considering there are many people from actual India.
"First Nations" correctly points out that there were people living and within multiple "nations" as in not homogenous culturally that lived in the area before others.
I would agree with you if this was entirely a question of "cultural elites" deciding on this, but the best and most recent data we have polling actual Native Americans most of whom are not "cultural elites" indicates at least some dislike of the name.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/02/04/native-mascots-survey
The team had previously spend a lot of time and money justifying the name. There are plenty of Native Americans that are not offended by the name, there just seem to be a clear majority that are and that should be taken into account.
I really don't find the results of this poll all that compelling, just as I haven't with any other poll on this. If one poll of 1000 Native Americans only shows that 57% of those self-identifying as Native are offended then this is a total non-issue. If it was like 95% and there were multiple polls showing that over time and there was consensus that "Redskins" was comparable to universally offensive ethnic slurs then this would be obvious, but given the high level of ambiguity even among Natives then this doesn't seem like something that should be so clear.
I think the more compelling element is that there is a much higher rate for Native Americans living "traditional lifestyles" and living on reservations. Amongst self-identified native Americans you have a lot of people who falsely think they are part Native Americans or who are only a small percentage and don't have much connection to their tribe. Elizabeth Warren is a dime a dozen, especially in places like Oklahoma(where she grew up) and Texas. Many people falsely claim Native Americans ancestry. This makes it particularly difficult to actually tackle issues related to Native Americans. Who counts? One way of looking at it is that people who live on reservations and who practice traditional Native American lifestyles are unambiguously Native American.
What really gets lost in all of this though and even in how I am speaking about it is that really all of these opinions might be drastically different based on the tribe. As many have pointed out Redskin is used regularly by Native Americans in some geographic areas.
So yeah this is much more complex issue than maybe it seems at first. But what I want to convey is that there are two sides to this issue. Also that it very well could be categorized as "Virtue Signaling" but to a certain segment of the Native population they do seem to care.
Yeah - you're very good at making arguments, Kenny, but the very strongest cases I've heard about this just don't impress me much. What actually lifelong fans of the team prefer and what the owners decide is best for their bottomline seems like they should matter more than doing some poll to see what the majority of a particular group of Native Americans or Indians or indigenous people (they can't even agree on the non-offensive names which they prefer!) or multicultural-minded leftists want.
I actually like "First Nations" it's kind of the most accurate, it's just not used in the US.
"Native" is kind of strange because humans are not really native to anywhere except for a specific part of Africa, humans by definition move and relocate, get displaced, displace others. A lot of it is ugly stuff, but it's very human.
So "indigenous" doesn't really work either for the same reason. That seems like they are a plant or something.
"Indian" is widely used but laughably inaccurate and confusing considering there are many people from actual India.
"First Nations" correctly points out that there were people living and within multiple "nations" as in not homogenous culturally that lived in the area before others.