Our past isn’t just where we came from — it’s who we are. I say this so you won’t think too much about who I really am. When I think about the old-fashioned epithet my team is named after, I consider what it stands for. As some of you may know, it was given to us 81 years ago by an avowed segregationist who liked to play Plantation Owner and Pickaninny. He saw an opportunity to cash in on the public fascination with Indians, the popularity of dime-store pulp and westerns such as the 1932 film “Ride ’Em Cowboy.” It was all a marketing gimmick. But let’s obscure that fact with a meaningless jumble of pseudo-patriotism and concern for history, which I barely studied in school, and when I did, I spent most of class chewing on my arm. Our franchise has a great tradition and legacy — one I haven’t bothered to investigate very deeply beyond the football part of it, unless reading the adventures of “Mustang Merle” battling “Fer-O-Cious Hostiles!” counts. Anyway, the soreheads tell me that in 1933 the bigot owner hired a coach with purported Indian roots who turned out to be fake. This guy had gone to the Carlisle Indian School and coached football at the Haskell Institute, two government-run trade schools that happened to have powerful football teams, but really specialized in “forcible assimilation” of Indian children. That meant seizing them from their parents, cutting off their braids, and forbidding them to speak their native languages, at peril of punishment by bullwhip. Carlisle’s proud motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” while Haskell could boast that it was the school that Jim Thorpe ran away from, twice.Get the Story:
Sally Jenkins: Washington Redskins team name: Another letter, the same spirit (The Washington Post 10/11) Related Stories:
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