Protests, political pressure, media snubs and legal actions have turned up the heat on Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder over opposition to the NFL team’s name, considered by critics to be a racist slur.
About 24 members of American Indian tribes stood in the rain outside Wisconsin’s Lambeau Field before Sunday’s game between the Green Bay Packers and the Redskins, demanding a change of the visitors’ name.
US Congress members have written to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell urging a name change while prominent columnists and media outlets have also taken a stand against using the name “Redskins.”
Photo: AFP
Snyder has said he has no intentions of changing the name of a team which has played as the Washington Redskins since 1937.
“We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple,” Snyder recently told USA Today. “Never. You can use all caps.”
Complaints against the name have caught the ear of Goodell, who grew up in Washington cheering the Redskins.
“I know the team name is part of their history and tradition. That is something that is important to the Redskins fans,” Goodell told a radio sports talk show in Washington last week. “I think what we have to do is listen.”
“If one person is offended, then we have to listen. Ultimately it is Dan’s decision, but it is something I want all of us to go out and make sure we are listening to our fans, listening to people that have a different view,” added Goodell, who earlier this year voiced support for the Redskins name.
Many US professional sports teams still carry Indian names, logos or mascots including the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, MLB’s Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves, the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks.
Brandon Stevens, an Oneida Nation official, said Native Americans find the association offensive.
“The warrior image is not the image we want to be portrayed,” he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel before the Green Bay-Washington game. “Having those negative stereotypes takes us back 100 years.”
Green Bay protest organizer Clif Morton said the campaign against the name would continue in other NFL stadiums.
“Mr Snyder thinks that he’s in control of more than he’s in actual control of,” Morton told reporters. “The people will speak on this issue, more and more people.”
Some high-profile sports columnists have voiced their opposition.
Noted NFL analyst Peter King of Sports Illustrated magazine said he would no longer use the name.
“I’ve been increasingly bothered by using the word, and I don’t want to be a part of using a name that a cross-section of our society feels is insulting,” he wrote.
King was joined earlier this month by USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, who once covered the Washington team as a beat reporter.
Tim Graham of the Buffalo News said he would no longer use “the R-word” and he was followed by Philadelphia Daily News reporter John Smallwood. Online magazine Slate.com and print magazines the New Republic and Mother Jones followed suit.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy defended the use of the name.
“We respect that reasonable people may have differing views,” McCarthy said in a statement.
“The name from its origin has always intended to be positive and has always been used by the team in a highly respectful manner,” he said.
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