If the tragic death of George Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police has taught us anything, it’s that it’s probably time for the Washington Redskins to change the name of their team. Confused yet? Welcome to the club. But still, that’s the latest complaint added to the laundry list of issues that have nothing to do with cases of excessive use of force by law enforcement officers to make the rounds this week. The Associated Press found several people weighing in on the idea of running this demand up the flagpole yet again. And the general consensus among them seems to be that the team’s owner might be more amenable this time around if the directive came from the NFL home office and Roger Goodell.
The recent national debate over racism has renewed calls for the NFL’s Washington Redskins to change their name, with Native American advocates believing the climate is right for action despite no evidence owner Dan Snyder is considering it.
It could take pressure from the other 31 owners and the league office itself to force Snyder’s hand. A Redskins spokesman said the team had no comment, while the NFL did not immediately respond to questions about the future of the name.
“(It) might be easier if the NFL as an institution or a corporation mandates the change because then it takes the pressure off of the Washington team themselves and Dan Snyder,” University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor of psychology Arianne Eason said Wednesday.
Not for nothing, but the people clamoring for this action might be onto something this time. In the past, the league has taken a mostly hands-off approach to any issues about team names and social tolerance, etc. But in the heat of the George Floyd moment, even Roger Goodell seemed to do an abrupt about-face, suggesting that one of the teams should sign Colin Kaepernick. If Goodell is suddenly in such a hurry to bend a knee, he might just go along with it.
As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t really a question about the offensive nature (or lack thereof) of the team’s name. This is simply yet another example of the progressive left smelling blood in the water and trying to dump every pet issue they’ve had for decades onto the bonfire that’s consuming the normal rules of order at the moment. The death of George Floyd (which absolutely needed to be fully investigated) has been used as some sort of absurd tipping point, leading many to feel that there’s now a fire sale going on for any social upheaval you’re personally in favor of.
Rioting in the streets has led to one government official or public figure after another nodding their heads in unison, seemingly hoping that enough concessions will quell the violence. (Spoiler alert: it won’t.) Black Live Matter, which was one rightfully condemned for their frequent marches demanding more dead cops, has now suddenly had an image makeover and the press is treating them like a mobile version of the NAACP. Statue toppling and the destruction of public property is now being treated as if it’s an Olympic event rather than a crime. And it’s already spread far beyond just Confederate monuments, encompassing the destruction of pieces commemorating priests, George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant. (Ironic that they would do that on Juneteenth considering that Grant was arguably one of the most important figures in the fight to free the slaves and end the institution of slavery, despite having been a slave owner himself prior to the war.)
Rather than responding to widespread violence, destruction, looting, and arson with swift reprisals and the restoration of order, we see the media cheering on elected officials who choose instead to take a knee. And as the continued list of demands demonstrates, this strategy was always doomed to fail. Nothing is ever going to be enough for those who want to fundamentally undo the fabric of the country and remake it in their own image of a socialist paradise or simply a wasteland of anarchy.
I will offer one final observation on the original subject of the Washington Redskins, however. It relates to a completely different topic I covered earlier today when discussing the style guide change directing us to capitalize the word black when referring to Black people. All through this debate, I’ve taken a position of allowing the public, the league and the team’s fans to make the final call as to whether or not the word “redskins” is offensive and needs to be dropped. An earlier poll showed that 90% of Native Americans weren’t bothered by it, so why should the rest of us be? But that’s because I was looking at the entire word “redskins.” But the word “red” by itself, specifically when talking about the tone of a person’s skin, has to be considered offensive by most people considering the question honestly doesn’t it? I’ll have to give this some more thought, but perhaps there’s more to the argument than I originally allowed.
