@PSMongoose:
And now we move away from the krellin-tastic part of the debate to someone who doesn't make the late Fred Phelps look like Ellen DeGeneres by comparison. :p
"One of the best arguments I've seen is that the word 'redskins' is no longer used in reference to American Indians. In modern day English, when one says 'redskins,' another thinks of the football team. No longer do bigots strut around town calling every American Indian they see a 'filthy redskin.' No. The word has not kept its meaning over time like 'nigger' has. It simply is not used derogatorily anymore."
I actually think that's a fair point, and probably the best argument on the side of keeping the name...I still disagree with parts of it (as I'll elaborate on in a minute) but that's a fair point that most people WOULD just think of the football team at this point.
That, however, is it's own problem, I think...it kind of dehumanizes that group and makes them almost into a cartoon character--it's the difference between active, aggressive racism and something like we see in music when white guys try and "act" stereotypically black or Latino or whatever to make them come across as having more cred--it appropriates the culture, reduces them to a stereotype, not a good stereotype at that, and worst of all, it makes assumptions about that culture.
I'd also say that...well...part of the reason, I think, no one would use that term as a slur nowadays is...um...we kind of killed most of them already? :/
Well, how often do you meet someone who's Native American?
In a nation of 300 million+, a quick Google search and look at the census numbers says that there are approximately 5.2 Native Americans in the US, of which about half are of mixed ancestry.
To put that in perspective, that's not just around 2% or so of the population, give or take (I think the site said 2.7%, if we're to be precise), but the groups with the two biggest genocides against them in the last century, the Armenians and Jews, both still number over 12 million worldwide...
And the First Nations had the whole damn CONTINENT before settlers came...so, that's a ridiculous amount of death and destruction, and I think that's the reason we don't use the term anymore...we don't have to--
The white settlers "won" that fight. Definitively.
By contrast, some still use the N-word today in part, I'd argue, because of resentment over African-Americans gaining success--a success White Supremacists view as being "stolen" from them.
But no one can say the Native Americans are stealing anyone's success...
They're historically some of the poorest, most underrepresented and disenfranchised demographics in American politics and society. Not only, then, do people often not see Native Americans--and, to be fair (if probably politically incorrect, but I don't know a better way to put it) a lot of us wouldn't "recognize" many of those 5 million Native Americans, because a lot of that's made up of people who are like Chaqa--1/8 or so Native American, and so, while I obviously don't know what Chaqa looks like, just from people I know who are 1/8 Native American...
You wouldn't often recognize them as being such at a glance in terms of appearance.
Which is again admittedly a problematic thing to say, but to be fair more than politically-correct--we'd be lying if we didn't say that different groups weren't at least somewhat recognizable by different facial features, hair color/styles/types, skin colors, etc...the idea of a "Jewish nose" is an Anti-Semitic stereotype, but again, to be fair and dissever it from those Anti-Semitic overtones grafted over it...if you say someone has a "Jewish nose," you know what they mean, and again, leaving aside the racism that term's been associated with over the centuries, there IS a reason for that--
You stick a group of people together in ghettos for 1000-1500 years and have them mainly mate and breed in-group (and add to that the fact the Old Testament has a few oh-so-nice passages discouraging mixing bloodlines between tribes) and chances are, you're going to get some features that occur relatively frequently, like the curly hair or nose...IT DOES *NOT* MEAN THAT YOU MUST HAVE THESE FEATURES (let's all get that clear, that's NOT what I'm saying) but it DOES mean that there are certain features that might key an outsider on to the fact someone's Jewish or Irish or Latino or Black or whatever.
To again be clear:
NOT HAVING SUCH FEATURES DOES *NOT* MEAN YOU'RE "LESS" OF A ___ OR THAT ALL MEMBERS OF GROUP X HAVE A ___ *INSERT FACIAL FEATURE HERE.*
So we're clear. :p
So, without overly-essentializing that point (which I'm already going to get flak for) I think it's fair to say that a lot of people wouldn't "recognize" one of those 5 million Native Americans if they saw them on the street...
Which is in turn why the Washington Redskins are such an issue, for the reason I just (albeit problematically) stated--
As unfair as it is, this IS one instance where the media shaping our perception of things is true, because I guarantee, for most previous generations of Americans (and with my generation as well, though I'd argue the Internet and globalization's cut down on this some) their first idea of what a Native American "was" came from films and TV shows and books on Thanksgiving and, yes, teams like the Washington Redskins...
And if it's already problematic enough for me to say, as a Jew myself, that you could make the argument that yeah, a lot of us often to have SOMEWHAT curly hair or a KIND OF have a nose that is commonly associated with Jews...imagine how problematic it is for an OUTSIDER to take facial and cultural stereotypes about a group and turn that into one of the things most commonly associated with said group.
So you're right, PSMongoose--when most of us use the term "Redskin," chances are, we're referring to the team that really needs to decide if Robert Griffin III is their future right now and figure out how in hell they're going to beat Chip Kelly's Eagles, rather than using it as a racial slur.
But for generations, including this one, Hollywood and books and that team have helped shape how Native Americans are depicted and perceived by outsiders...so when one of the first things you associate with that slur is the team, that's its own kind of problem, because the team's logo, fight song, and so on are themselves amalgamations of stereotypical ways in which White America has long viewed Native Americans.
By contrast, and in closing, because I just know someone's going to bring it up eventually...
Other groups that are depicted as mascots.
The USC Trojans?
Who cares, the Trojans died/assimilated millenia ago, you can do what you want.
The Minnesota Vikings?
More or less the same thing...Scandinavians exist, obviously, but since the Vikings depicted there are 1. More artistic creations (like the horned helmets, more Wagner than actually Scandinavian) and 2. Depictions of a way of life that existed a thousand or so years ago...yeah, you can do what you want, really...there are descendents of the Vikings/Norse peoples, Danes and Norwegians and so on, but no real "Vikings" in the classical sense.
The Boston Celtics/Notre Dame Fighting Irish?
More problematic, true, but I've never heard of anyone seriously having a problem with the former, really...as for the latter, Notre Dame was founded by Irish Catholics, so I guess when you found the university and have that background you can name the team that if you want, sure...similarly, I BET that if the Redskins had been founded and owned by a Native American...
INSTEAD of a racist white man who refused at every turn to integrate his team...
I bet this wouldn't be as much of an issue, as then we legitimately could say that, hey, if Native Americans wanted to name the team that at the start, then who are we to say?
But no...it was a name begat by an angry old bigot of a white man...and therein lies the difference.
What's in a name?
Everything from the history and context to who uses it, when, and why.
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