"The Washington Redskins is an old team sports brand name with no suitable place in the nation’s capital when Barak Obama takes office as the first African-American President of the United States. Of course, Indigenous America has its own museum on the Mall. Official Washington believes it treats First Nations with the respect due predecessors and compatriots. To make this a little truer, this public sports slur about Red Skins could to be remedied while the rest of Indian affairs is left on President Obama’s plate; especially, neglects inherent in the day to day follow through by the Federal government and Congress in confirming the nation’s Constitutional obligation to honor the trust relationship between America and the tribes, (a relationship taken up and confirmed by the Founders and by the Crown before them). You and I can eliminate the sports slur. Modern tribes and Native American advocacy groups, have other, more productive ways to expend their political energy and resources than to waste time on this old stereotype. Why should they expend energy fighting to eliminate an obvious joke on the jokers? Changing the name should be of no more remark than wiping away graffiti in public restrooms. Jews did not have to lobby to get the Jew’s Harp renamed a “mouth harp?” It just happened; tastes change and old prejudices stand out like sour thumbs.

The Washington Redskins are the corporate professional team in Washington D.C. (Maryland, actually) with national visibility every time they play. The second most valuable franchise in the National Football League, it was also the very last to integrate its team under threat of eviction from its home stadium. News travels slowly in this organization.

If we get this artifact of yesteryear rebranded before the Inauguration, everyone wins. With the renaming, Redskin paraphernalia will become hot selling collectibles, or, at least, will be hyped as “collectible”, until it is in the hands of collectors, like shares of stock. New fans will focus on the merits of the Washington team instead of its curious and anomalous name, in this era, so transcendent of racial self-consciousness in our thinking and world views, that red skin communicates a danger sign for cancerous melanoma and not danger of a savage attack by marauding warriors. So it is time to move on."

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Steve Conn: Operation Redskin Removal (Counterpunch 12/2)