Posted on 08/31/2014 6:34:31 PM PDT by Daniel Clark
Don’t Gimme An “N”: “Redskins” is nothing like the “N-word”
by Daniel Clark
If you’ve watched any media panel discussions about the Washington Redskins’ nickname, you’ve noticed that the typical, knee-jerk liberal response is, “Calling a team the Redskins is no different from calling it the N-word.” A more honest critic would stop to wonder why that’s never been done.
It can’t be that people have been more sensitive about offending blacks than Indians. Back when many sports teams were given their nicknames, nobody would have guessed that a racial slur would one day be censored as “the N-word.” The football team previously known as the Boston Redskins was christened in 1933, back when cartoons, radio shows and other pop media were totally unrestrained in their willingness to denigrate black people. There was obviously no stigma against racism toward blacks in those days, so why wouldn’t somebody have named his sports team “the N-word”?
Because it’s an insult, that’s why. A sports team does not select a nickname for the purpose of adopting its negative connotations. Yet the politically correct wonks at the U.S. patent office, when they called the Redskins name “disparaging,” must have believed that the football team meant to disparage itself.
The debate ought to end right there. If anyone questions whether the Redskins name is disparaging, or “hostile and abusive” in NCAA lingo, the immediate answer should be that it must not be, otherwise the team would never have adopted the nickname. No team owner is going to name his team something he views disrespectfully. That’s why you don’t see any sports teams with names like the Telemarketers, the Manson Family or the In-Laws. It’s also why a vast majority of fans, including American Indians, have absolutely no problem with the Redskins name.
What makes this difficult to explain to liberals is that the legitimacy of the disparagement charge depends on the intention of whomever assigned the nickname, whereas liberals feel that everything is about themselves, and is therefore defined by their perception. It doesn’t matter how illogical it is to believe that someone who hates Indians would want a picture of an Indian on practically everything he owns. The important thing is that a liberal’s taking offense to the name Redskins makes him feel superior, therefore Redskins must be disparaging.
By demanding the elimination of allegedly “disparaging” or “hostile and abusive” nicknames, the liberal news media and the even more liberal sports media are essentially nailing a “Whites Only” sign on the team mascots’ locker room door. When confronted with this unintentional outcome, they’re bound to decide, out of “fairness,” that all human sports mascots ought to be banned.
Take the Dallas Cowboys, for instance. As we remember from the Reagan and G.W. Bush years, liberals use the term “cowboy” disparagingly. Besides, did anybody conduct a poll among the “rustic community” to make sure they unanimously approved?
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said last year, “If one person is offended, we have to listen,” but evidently that doesn’t apply to those who are offended by hollow liberal sanctimony. As long as the aim is to avoid offending liberals, there’s practically no end to it. Even if all human mascots were stamped out, there are those animal liberation zealots who have argued that naming teams after animals is exploitative.
It doesn’t matter how irrational that is. The important thing is that someone is offended, so Goodell and others who subscribe to the one-offended-liberal rule have got to treat it like a serious matter. Before much longer, we’ll find ourselves watching a game between the Seattle Sustainability and the New Orleans Bicuriosity. Then again, few of us would watch any such thing, which may be the entire point.
Liberals are doing to football what Marge Simpson did to Itchy & Scratchy. They’re perfectly willing to destroy the product as long as it fails to conform to their worldview. To them, football is a mean game in which people get hurt. The players say unkind things to hurt each other’s feelings, and even seize territory by force, without intervention from a conflict resolution team. Wouldn’t it be much better if both teams could share the football, and work together toward a common goal?
Of course it wouldn’t, which explains everything. Liberals live for the purpose of spoiling else’s fun, because exercising the ability to do so is the one thing that liberals themselves have fun doing. Feeding that power through a series of incremental concessions isn’t going to slow down their onslaught, any more than a prevent defense prevents the opposing team from scoring.
-- Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.
The fact that you are saying “Redskins” and obliquely referring to a word that can’t be uttered demonstrates they are not on par....
WORDSPEAK.
It is the word, and words are bad and must be removed from use.
It does not matter what the speaker’s intention was, only the word matters. Therefore it is now prohibited.
Gee.... I’ve seen this movie before.
LOL! Thanks.
Weren’t they called Redskin Indians in the first place to differentiate them from brownskin Indians of the Middle East ?
I think they should call themselves the WASHINGTON INTERNS.
The end game of the left is power; plain and simple. Whether they’re killing the unborn, dictating our vocabularies, taking our property or telling us what we can and can’t eat, the point is having the brute force at their disposal to impress their will on us. That’s the only thing that matters. All of their “causes” are just a means to that end.
All the people who are going to make money off of the change.
Is that why Obama has a band-aid around his finger ?
A local Minor League Hockey team just folded and won’t be needing their team name.
Fortunately, this Colorado hat tip to fishing is quite appropriate for a D.C. club.
The Cutthroats.
Back when the NFL was forming, there were more Indians playing pro football than blacks.
But the name, in this case, was more about marketing than honoring or dishonoring any racial group. The Redskins began play in Boston which had two baseball franchises - the Red Sox and the Braves. Pro football was very minor compared the baseball back then so the thought was that latching onto a team name that’s similar to the baseball team in the community was a good marketing ploy.
Calling the team the Redskins could draw both Red Sox and Braves fans into the stands to watch the Red-Braves represent Bostonians in the fall.
Barbara Walters couldn't say an "r" so she avoided "r" words by talking around them. It sounded like this:
Baba Wattes couldn't say an "r" so she avoided "r" woods by talking awound them.
We had a priest in our parish who had the Baba Wattes syndrom. In the place of "God graciously grant us" he would say "God gwaciously gwant us." THAT annoyed me.
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