Redskins lose copyright to 'hateful slur' name after tradema

[Metahive]

There's such a wide variety to make fun of people for what they do instead of what they are, having to resort to caveman racism just reveals the lousy comedian.

t in general terms, I just don't feel that anything, even racial slurs should be prohibited ground for comedy as long as there is no spite in it.

Who said anything about banning this sort of humor? People so far have criticised this sort of humor as vile and insensible, which isn't the same as all. It's telling that people who defend this sort of thing always have to classify any sort of criticism as outright calls for censorship. It's like they don't actually have anything to say in its favor other than "well, it ain't illegal".

[Patroklos]

I'm curious, would you object to a German soccer team calling themselves the Jew Scalpers?

I can't claim to say how accurate the article is, but according to some stories I've heard the origin of the word came about because a few English soldiers calling the scalps of natives that they wanted butchered "redskins".

You might have heard that, probably because it is being actively peddled by various activists despite their knowledge that its a fairy tale, but it is a complete fabrication.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_vall ... ectly.html

There were in fact bounties for killing Natives, a tactic not uncommon during that time for anyone including the natives in their own warfare nor was it restricted to use against just natives in the New World, but the term redskins predates it and was used in documentation for this purpose because thats howe everyone, including the natives themselves, refered to natives as at the time.

[FSTargetDrone]

Can we imagine a professional sports team in the USA called the "Blackskins" or the "Yellowskins" keeping such a name these days? Of course not. This is no different.

[SCRawl]

This is the baseball equivalent:

[Patroklos]

Can we imagine a professional sports team in the USA called the "Blackskins" or the "Yellowskins" keeping such a name these days? Of course not. This is no different.

Its a lot different because those terms were applied to those peoples, not invented by and used amoungst themselves to later be adopted by others like the Native Americans. Read the slate article above.

You may still consider it offensive, but it is not the same thing. As an example of how this worked see the state of Oklahoma:

The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people. Choctaw Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the federal government regarding the use of Indian Territory, in which he envisioned an all-Indian state controlled by the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe the Native American race as a whole. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was officially approved in 1890, two years after the area was opened to white settlers.[9][16][17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma#Etymology

[Metahive]

Yeah, and "nigger" comes from a word that means "black" without any sort of racist connotations too, doesn't make a damn lick of difference. Forest and trees, people!

[Patroklos]

That word comes from the Portugese calling Africans black though, not from Africans telling the Portugese they are blacks and it evolving from there.

Again, that does not mean its not offensive now but it is not the same thing. Redskin is not the same thing as nigger in modern culture for lots of reasons. Offensiveness is not an absolute, it is a matter of degrees, and history and context have a lot to do with that.

[Metahive]

The origins of a word don't matter when it's the usage of the word that gave it racist and discriminating connotations. Yellow used to be an exalted color (certain shades of it at last) in China, but that doesn't make calling Chinese or any other East Asian people "yellow" any less racist.

[Channel72]

This is the baseball equivalent:

That's hilarious.

I guess it really does help put in context how blatantly racist the Cleveland Indians logo was.

Of course, the harsh reality is that nobody cares about Native Americans. We Jews have spokespeople and resources to complain about this shit, but Native Americans aren't particularly influential in terms of penetrating the public mindshare.

[Thanas]

Yeah, sad that Obama is just the 4th sitting president to visit a reservation.

[FSTargetDrone]

I guess it really does help put in context how blatantly racist the Cleveland Indians logo was.

Of course, the harsh reality is that nobody cares about Native Americans. We Jews have spokespeople and resources to complain about this shit, but Native Americans aren't particularly influential in terms of penetrating the public mindshare.

Cleveland is still using the logo.

Chief Wahoo.

[Channel72]

The sad thing is that Native American stereotypes don't seem to have the same "sting" as other stereotypes. The typical "greedy, diamond-store owning, money-lending Jew" or the "uneducated watermelon-eating Negro" stereotypes seem to produce a powerful taboo in the public consciousness. Native American stereotypes don't seem to produce the same taboo.

To offer one potential controversial hypothesis to explain why exactly that is: the Native American stereotype exploits an historical expectation - not a modern one. A "modern" negative stereotype would be more like, well... a Native American alcoholic casino owner, or something - not an archetypal 19th century Sioux Chief. The only reason such a stereotype likely doesn't exist is because you don't exactly run into many Native Americans, even in America - and the ones you do are usually racially mixed and therefore difficult to distinguish from Polynesian or other Asia-Pacific ethnicities.

[Thanas]

You are pretty ignorant about the situation on most reservations if you think the exploitation and/or discrimination does not exist anymore.

BTW, on my last visit to the Cheyenne people I had no trouble figuring out who was what.

[Elfdart]

Redskins chose the name after one of their first coaches, who claimed to be native to dodge the draft (let that one sink in) and who had a rather racist and comical stereotypical view of natives (who could have seen that one coming).

Actually, no. The team was called the Boston Braves when they shared a stadium with a baseball team by the same name. When they switched over to playing in Fenway Park (home of the Boston Red Sox), they changed the name to the Redskins to avoid confusion. Keith Olbermann gives the details:



The idea that George Preston Marshall would do anything in honor of American Indians (including posers) or anyone else who wasn't a white Protestant is absurd.

[Thanas]

Well, I didn't know about that before. That makes this even worse - when did this come out?

[Grumman]

You are pretty ignorant about the situation on most reservations if you think the exploitation and/or discrimination does not exist anymore.

That is not what he said. His hypothesis is that the Redskin mascot reflects a stereotype about people who are long dead, not a stereotype about their descendants. Or is this guy a hateful slur against modern Scandinavians?

[Sidewinder]

Can't the Redskins claim something else as their namesake, like a redskin potato? They can adopt a giant potato wearing sunglasses, as their new mascot. "We're not racist anymore!" Problem solved for both sides in this dispute.

[Patroklos]

Well, I didn't know about that before. That makes this even worse - when did this come out?

How is it worse? If its not linked to native Americans at all it certainly wasn't selected to purposely be derogatory to them at the time. This basically throws out both the arguement it was originally meant to honor native Americans as well an any racist motivation on the part of the owner as some on both sides have claimed. It was just a colloquial name for native Americans that still sounded like the association he wanted to maintain.

As this point the origin is irrelevant, the 80 follow on years of use and perception is. If you say redskins people think football.

[Thanas]

It makes it worse because the owner thought he could go from braves to redskins without spending a thought on the negative connotations.

[Patroklos]

Was there negative consequences in the 30s? Amongst any population?

[Elfdart]

Well, I didn't know about that before. That makes this even worse - when did this come out?

A few weeks ago. SI probably noticed as I did (and anyone else familiar with Marshall's assholery) that the "we did it to honor the Native Americans" bit smelled of horseshit. So they went and looked up Marshall's quotes on the issue. We had a thread here years ago, where I pointed out that the only real journalism that goes on in the US is sports-related. Daniel Snyder made a claim that seemed fishy, so the writer(s) at SI looked it up and confirmed it was shit for the birds.

If only reporters covering important things did likewise.

[Thanas]

Was there negative consequences in the 30s? Amongst any population?

What kind of argument is this? Because it is okay to use a slur (and it was known as a slur back then just like the n-word was) without fear of consequences does not make it okay.

[AniThyng]

Maybe this is slightly more compelling

http://www.timesdispatch.com/sports/pro ... mode=story

Granted, it seems more like a "well yeah we have bigger fish to fry than this trifle" but still.

Identity politics is still something that seems charged with a lot of assumptions that aren't necessarily always true.

[Thanas]

That is another piece of bad reporting, deadspin debunked it as Snyder's fake story.

[Enigma]

There's the Chicago Blackhawks

Cleveland Indians (the team is also called the Tribe)

And the Atlanta Braves


Yet all they just harp on the Redskins? No-one remembers the Blackhawks' Tomahawk chop?