{"id":57578,"date":"2013-10-17T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T17:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=57578"},"modified":"2013-10-13T19:50:59","modified_gmt":"2013-10-14T00:50:59","slug":"resistance-to-the-redskins-mascot-racism-in-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/10\/17\/resistance-to-the-redskins-mascot-racism-in-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Resistance to the “Redskins” Mascot: Racism in Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Redskins have been in the news lately\u00a0— on the front page of the\u00a0Times<\/a>,<\/em> for example — and not for their prowess on the gridiron. It\u2019s their name. Many native Americans find it offensive, understandably so.\u00a0 \u201cRedskins\u201d was not a name they chose. It was a label invented by the European-Americans who took their land and slaughtered them in numbers that today would be considered genocide.<\/p>\n

President Obama offered the most tepid hint of criticism of the name. He did not say they should change their name. He said that\u00a0if<\/i>\u00a0he owned the team, he would \u201cthink about\u201d changing the name. But that was enough for non-Indians to dismiss the idea as yet one more instance of \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defenders of the name also argue that the name is not intended to be offensive, and besides, a survey shows that most Americans are not bothered by it.\u00a0 I would guess that most Americans also have no problem with the Cleveland Indians logo, another sports emblem that real Indians find offensive.<\/p>\n

In response the National Congress of American Indians offers these possibilities.\u00a0 The Cleveland cap is the real thing. \u00a0The other two are imagined variations on the same theme.<\/p>\n

\"Caps\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The pro-Redskins arguments could also apply here. The New York Jews and San Francisco Chinamen and their logos are not\u00a0intended<\/i>\u00a0to offend, and a survey would probably find a majority of Americans untroubled by these names and logos.\u00a0 And those who do object are just victims of \u201cthe tyranny of political correctness.\u201d\u00a0 This last phrase comes from a tweet by Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III, an African American.\u00a0 His response seems to make all the more relevant the suggestion of years ago by the American Indian Movement’s Russell Means: \u201cWhy don\u2019t they call them The Washington Niggers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Montclair Socioblog<\/a>; HT to Max.<\/i><\/p>\n Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University<\/a>. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Redskins have been in the news lately\u00a0— on the front page of the\u00a0Times, for example — and not for their prowess on the gridiron. It\u2019s their name. Many native Americans find it offensive, understandably so.\u00a0 \u201cRedskins\u201d was not a name they chose. It was a label invented by the European-Americans who took their land […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":57580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,279,285,1758,1759,3875,20063,1757,108],"class_list":["post-57578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-objectification","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-american-indiansaboriginals","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-jews","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/10\/Screenshot_110.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57578"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57592,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57578\/revisions\/57592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}