Opinion | Sports

Opinion: Message loud and clear on racist Washington name

Thursday, November 14, 2013

From John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, history professor Thomas G. Smith notes that the Washington professional football team has long faced controversy:

African-Americans were referred to as "darkies" and "colored," and Native Americans as "redskins." On TV Westerns, "Indians" were sometimes portrayed as noble characters, but "redskins" almost never were.
Over the decades, most Americans have come to learn that names like "darkies," "colored" and "redskins," not to mention the N-word, are considered racially offensive and hurtful. The Washington Redskins made a partial concession to racial sensitivity in the early 1960s when they cleaned up the demeaning language in their fight song, which read, in part, "Scalp 'um, swamp 'um, we will take 'um big score."
Unlike George Marshall, Dan Snyder, the present-day owner of the Washington football team, is no racist. Nor are the vast majority of the team's fans. But he, and perhaps most fans of the team, refuses to acknowledge that the nickname and logo are offensive.
Like Marshall, he is being pressured by the President of the United States and the commissioner of the NFL to consider a name change. Like Marshall, he is defiant. He will "NEVER" give up the name. Fans of the team defend the name and logo on the basis of history and tradition.
But a half century earlier, diehard fans were using history and tradition to defend a system of racial segregation in the South. American Nazis paraded outside D.C. Stadium carrying signs reading "Keep Redskins White." Just like then, current defenders of tradition blast liberals for interfering in an issue that is none of their business. Traditionalists claim the nickname honors Native Americans. But the name is no more ennobling than slurs for Jews, Irish, Japanese or other Asians.

Get the Story:
Thomas G. Smith: JFK, Obama: Redskins needs to change (CNN 11/14)