I don't know about that, Santa.

Mike Stanton is still called Mike Stanton by many, not Giancarlo Stanton.

A lot of people call him Chad Ochocinco, even though he changed it back to Chad Johnson.

Prince was always Prince, not "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince"

Teams that have changed names

Miami University
Syracuse
Eastern Michigan
UMASS
St Johns

Which of these teams has an enduring identity crisis. All but Syracuse I had no idea there was even a name change, and syracuse only because it happened recently.

ULM did too, went from the Indians to the Warhawks

Those are college teams, though. A lot of people don't follow college football.

cfb is the third most popular sport behind the nfl and mlb (and quickly catching up to mlb). it's not the same scale but it's not very far behind either... i think they're comparable

actually taking the entirety of college athletics, it's probably 2nd behind nfl and ahead of mlb. definitely comparable scale

@chaqa Historically native americans were treated poorly? You might take a spin out to Ft. Sill, Pine Ridge or the Dinetah. Native Americans are subject to hate crimes at a higher per capital rate than any other minority group except gays. There ain't nothing historical about it whatsoever

I looked up the 2012 FBI hate crime statistics, and found that in 2012 there were 265 or so hate crimes against natives or inuits. That's 3.3% of all hate crimes.

I just don't think it's a severe enough issue to get upset about, for me. Injustice happens all the time, as does discrimination. You need to pick and choose your battles.

"You're the one claiming this issue doesn't matter because you unilaterally declared it not to matter."

While I disagree with Chaqa's stance--since I posted the whole damn thing against his stance--he wasn't speaking unilaterally, he was speaking for HIMSELF.

He never said, "I speak for all 1/4 Cherokee people everywhere."

You meanwhile, Putin, continue to take it upon yourself to assume an air of smugness and unpleasantness that makes any discussion with you a debate against a petulant self-righteous child.

Also, do you not see the irony of your blasting white guys for naming the team this in defiance of the wishes of many Native Americans...and you turning around, as a white guy, and disregarding the opinion of someone partially Native American, when you're presumably as whitey-white as can be?

Every existing native reservation is a hate crime in itself.

The hate crimes are pretty damned important to the people attacked and murdered. No big deal to Chaqa I guess. Suicide rates, poverty, education, social indicators are all poor because of persistent discrimination. Maybe if you had as much contact with native communities as I do you would understand the issue.

And boSox, it isn't the reservations themselves but the treatment of those living there that are the issue. Those reservations can play a critical role in the life of tribes. Eliminating them would be worse. Better to simply help improve life there instead

The fact that those reservations are located in what we consider "spare space" (see the Black Hills, arguably turned into the grandest insult in world history) instead of the places that mattered to those tribes when they were relocated from their homes, instead of simply leaving them where they were and living around them, will dictate how people see them. They're necessary in one sense but the simple fact that we can't give tribes autonomous status and allow them to live as connected or disassociated with our nation as they choose is what makes our treatment of our native peoples so pathetic.

Were the world to know of the conditions on those reservations, we'd be even more hated than we are.

hey if you have an issue with a team changing its name from a racist caricature to something less so than you probably have terrible opinions overall. Your personal sentiments don't really factor into the debate.

Seriously, people like Chaqa vastly underestimate the violence and destruction brought to native peoples in North America, and the appropriation of racist terms against those people as points of pride for any reason (sporting, weapons of war, etc.) is disgusting and reprehensible for a country that thinks itself as fair and morally good. what's worse is that people like Chaqa use some thinly veiled excuse of native heritage, while being completely removed and ignorant of anything about that heritage, as a method of silencing criticism for... what reason? So some millionaire somewhere doesn't have to pay to chance logos on merchandise? Even a symbolic gesture at changing the name would show some sort of remorse for what this country did to its native inhabitants. Continuing on and acting like nothing happened or everything is okay now is a woefully pitiful stance.

That's certainly true, BoSox. THe way they've been created was and is appalling. I not infrequently do legal work for tribes and/or members, so from a legal and political standpoint reservations are pretty important elements of tribal sovereignty. That's where I was coming from.

That must be depressing. Even if you win a suit against a government they don't feel compelled to make any concessions, because they never have before so why start a trend, right..

Yeah, Putin, what chaqa said. If somebody is fired for how they voted, that is a crime and should be investigated, but it is not a violation of the first amendment.

The second point you made ("firing people for having unpopular views on the US government") is too vague for me really to address. I'm not sure what facts you're referring to.

Semck, you were the one who in response to private institutions having the right to refuse to host a team that racially abuses people, said "yeah the first amendment is not very popular".

I enjoyed how Obi did a 180 simply because I agreed with him.

Astounding, this thread.

I didn't do a 180 at all, I still think they should change the name...

I simply felt you were being an unmitigated prick to Chaqa--so, you know, just you being you.

In Putin Land (I'm borrowing that from you, Chaqa), do you REALLY not see the irony of you, whitey-white that you are, LECTURING someone 1/4 Native American?

You could still be right and he wrong (and I think that's the case) but still, given that we're in arms about a white owner lecturing Native Americans how his racist slur of a name means pride and honor and all that shit, you don't see the irony of your lecturing a Native American on how your opinion somehow counts for more than his?

No. Of course not. 'Cause only Putin is ever right in Putin Land.

(Actually...is Putin Land really Wonderland? And you're the Red Queen--IT ALL FITS!)

CHANGE PLACES!

@Putin,

" Semck, you were the one who in response to private institutions having the right to refuse to host a team that racially abuses people, said "yeah the first amendment is not very popular".

UMN is a public institution.

The line that I quoted was, "A university, state or private, should have the right to refuse to host an event if it doesn't fit within their values."

This is not something that a first-amendment enthusiast would say, because it includes public universities.

Obviously private universities should and do have that right.

Putin is the Mad Hatter. I love it.

No university shouldn't be compelled to do that, semck. I don't care if it's public. They have their own values that they ask each of their students and members of their staff to stick to, and clearly, hosting this event doesn't fit within those values. I'm sure you can write up some legal summary and cite some obscure Minnesota Supreme Court case from 1906 to tell me I'm wrong, but that's not going to override that this school has values and anyone with even a half-assed set of values sympathizes with them.

Well, who sympathizes with whom, bo, is of course not a legal question. But a public university only allowing speech that is consistent with its values is.

Needless to say, I don't need to resort to obscure 1906 cases from the Minnesota Supreme Court to find relevant cases -- it is the federal first amendment we're talking about, after all. The most relevant cases, off the top of my head, are those that invalidated campus hate speech codes. See Doe v. University of Michigan, which was a 1989 federal district court case; and R.A.V. v City of St. Paul, a unanimous Supreme Court decision striking down a municipal hate speech code (though this one wasn't a university).

This was shortly after applied by the fourth circuit in Iota Xi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity v. George Mason University (1993), which prevented a public university from banning a racially charged "ugly woman contest" by one of its fraternities. ( http://cehdclass.gmu.edu/jkozlows/gmu1az.htm ).

So no, it's not true that a public university has "the right to refuse to host an event if it doesn't fit within their values." You may, of course, say that it *should* (though you likely wouldn't if you greatly valued free speech), but in any event, it does not.

By the way, a nice source for the above is here.

http://www.uvm.edu/~vtconn/?Page=v20/garrett.html

I'm not even sure how this qualifies as a free speech conversation. They don't have to tell anyone why they don't want the game played in their stadium. It's not the Vikings' stadium anyway, they're just "borrowing" it (for a lot of money, of course).

@bo,

They've been pretty clear that they're doing it because of the offensive nature of the Redskins name/uniform. So has everybody on this thread. You can't say, on the one hand, that the content of somebody's symbolism is offensive, and then turn around and say that there's not a viewpoint/speech issue.

In fact, your specific assertion was not just about this, but that universities should have a general right to disallow events that don't comport with their "values." There is obviously speech at play here.

Yeah, my assertion is about speech and I hardly even believe what I said, I don't know why I said it.

As for the stadium, don't lawyers do this thing where they falsify everything that's happened and then use some weird loophole out of the depths of some obscure statute written 40 years ago to win cases? That's how law works, right? So retract that statement about the Redskins and when game time comes, just happen to have some sort mechanical issue that makes playing on the field "unsafe" or something like that and let your lawyers bail you out... I don't know, it's late, and it's summer, I don't feel like thinking.

lol. Lawyers do try that sometimes. I suppose it must work. Often it involves very angry judges, most especially if the other side's lawyers are competent enough to look at the record, such as, oh, I don't know, newspaper articles and such like.