NFL Obama Says Redskins Should Change Their Name

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Tribe refuses “bribe money” from Washington foundation
Posted by Mike Florio on July 20, 2014, 12:14 AM EDT
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It’s a story that has been percolating for a few days. Now that the Associated Press has picked it up, the latest P.R. embarrassment regarding the Washington team name has become official.

A Native American tribe on the Arizona-California border trying to raise $250,000 for a skate park has refused funding from the Original Americans Foundation, a group started earlier this year by owner Daniel Snyder in response to ongoing opposition to a name regarded by many as a slur.

“No, we’re not going to accept any kind of monetary offer to side with allowing them to utilize the inappropriate name for this NFL team,” Quechan tribal President Keeny Escalanti Sr. told the AP.

“The sacrifice we took to say no wasn’t an easy one. We wish we could help the kids today by taking the partnership. We’re trying to teach our community and the youth that we can do things the right way. We don’t have to accept this type of money from these people.”

Previously, the Arizona Republic explained that the tribe turned down a “blank check” from the foundation at a meeting attended by Original Americans Foundation executive director Gary Edwards and director Karl Schreiber.

“He said he was a proud Redskin and had been a proud Redskin since he was a child,” Escalanti told the Republic regarding Edwards. And it got even more uncomfortable than that.

“Edwards just brought up key words that you just don’t bring up in Indian country, like assimilation, annihilation,” Escalanti said. “And he tried to talk down about White people, saying they’re the oppressor. . . . I don’t know what he thought he was doing in talking like that to us — impress us? Like he thought he could talk like that among his fellow Natives? It was so awkward.”

Thus, the tribe rejected an offer to pay for the entire park, issuing the following statement to the Republic: “We will not align ourselves with an organization to simply become a statistic in their fight for name acceptance in Native communities. . . . We know bribe money when we see it.”

The debate regarding the name has simmered in recent weeks, with most of the news coming from failed efforts by the team to defend it. While the controversy has reached a stage where it’s likely to not go away until the name changes, there wouldn’t be as much to say about the situation if the team can manage to stay out of its own way for a week or two.
 
King: Washington will have a new name by 2016
Posted by Mike Florio on July 21, 2014, 9:25 AM EDT
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Every Monday morning, we take a stroll through Peter King’s Monday Morning Quarterback column in search of nuggets that fit within our never-ending non-stop shop of NFL news and whatnot. Today, we found a potent piece of whatnot buried in the column.

Off for the last month or so, King dropped the following bombshell in the 10 things he thinks: “I think the Washington franchise will have a new team name by 2016.”

With a Ruthian finger to the outfield bleachers, the reporter who no longer has a Ruthian physique became the first national media type to put a date certain on change. In fact, other than Senator Harry Reid (who has predicted a change within three years), we can’t think of any other prominent person who has provided a timetable for changing the name.

While King’s “I think” feature often has a wistful, speculative quality, he doesn’t throw dirt. He typically has heard something specific that makes him think what he thinks.

“I know things,” he’ll often say to me when we get together before a Sunday slate of games, with a twinkle in his eye that may or may not be attributable in whole or in part to caffeine.

Chances are that, in saying that the name will change by 2016, King has indeed been told something by someone in position to know the truth that the current plan is for the name to change by 2016.

It’s a tight timetable, and it suggests that the NFL and/or the team have moved much closer to deciding that it no longer makes sense to have a lingering (and intensifying) debate regarding whether the name of one of the NFL’s 32 franchises is racially offensive.
 
Washington launches appeal of USPTO decision
Posted by Mike Florio on August 14, 2014, 10:47 PM EDT
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In June, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office determined, via its Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, that the trademarks held by the Washington NFL franchise should be cancelled. On Thursday, the team filed its appeal.

Technically a new action filed in federal court, the team hopes for the same outcome that a federal judge reached when considering the same decision made by the USPTO in 1999.

“The Washington Redskins look forward to all of the issues in the case being heard in federal court under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The team is optimistic that the court will correctly and carefully evaluate the proofs, listen to the arguments, and confirm the validity of the Washington Redskins’ federal trademark registrations, just as another federal court has already found in a virtually identical case,” attorney Bob Raskopf said.

The lawyers representing the citizens who filed the attack on the team’s name are equally confident.

“We have been thinking about this stage of the case. We are prepared. And we are prepared with some surprises,” attorney Jesse Witten told USA Today.

The Change the Mascot campaign issued a statement that focuses not on the legalities but on the right-or-wrong question of whether the name should remain in place.

“The National Football League claims it has a no-tolerance policy when it comes to racism, but by continuing to fight a court battle defending its promotion of a dictionary-defined racial slur, the league makes clear it is a proud purveyor of bigotry against Native Americans,” the group said. “If the league genuinely cared about equality, civility and mutual respect, then it would stand on the right side of history with Native American organizations, civil rights groups, religious leaders, sports icons, and Members of Congress from both parties who have called for Washington’s team to change its name. It would not continue deploying its army of lawyers to clog the courts with increasingly desperate defenses of a racial epithet. The real question this latest appeal raises is simple: Why are the NFL and the Washington team so pathologically committed to continuing to slur Native Americans?”

The answer possibly comes from, of all places, TMZ. Based on the court documents obtained by TMZ (and cited nowhere else, as best we can tell), the league and the team believe that “Redskin” and “redskin” are two entirely different terms.

“Even if the term ‘redskin,’ used in singular, lower case form, refers to an ethnic group, the term is not disparaging when employed as a proper noun, as a team name, in the context of professional football,” the team argues in its official filing, according to TMZ.

While that language-based distinction may explain the zealous efforts to defend the ongoing use of the term, that same reasoning would apply to any offensive term that has its first letter capitalized, transforming it from a slur to a proper noun.
 

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i hope the Vikes follow through with what the University of Minnesota are telling them to do, if they start that more teams will follow. ESPN said that Houston, Dallas and a handful of other teams could do the same since the city's where the stadiums are have similar rules to offensive words. I still find it discussing that Snyder has let it get this far, and the money he could make in selling new merch with new names would be huge.
 
I note a few disdained reactions to the Redskins name, which I find hard to fathom. Reading those articles I see the name will probably change but they'll always be the Redskins to me. To me it is just a name of a franchise team, nothing racist in it, but the majority obviously think differently.
However, Snyder has always proven to be stubborn with things so he'll push it all the way and I can see why he would.
I can't say what my preference would be. Natives is too wishy washy. Maybe the Washington Barracks? :) I really don't know.
 
I don't get the uproar around Redskins, not being American, but given there's been a fair few Native Americans coming out and comparing it to n-----, I can see why there's an expectation to change it. No one would call their professional sporting team that after all.
 
It's not a black and white (pardon the pun) issue; yes, there are sections of the Native American community who don't like the name, but according to all the available data and polling, a majority of Native Americans actually support the name and consider it akin to a badge of honour.

I saw a study that basically said the percentage of Native Americans who don't like the name is roughly equal to the percentage of modern Scandinavians who find the misappropriation/misrepresentation of the 'Vikings' culture to be offensive.

Food for thought.
 
GG said:
Pea-sized food for thought....which may satiate some :eek:
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The vast majority of people who are opposed to the name are white people who are telling Native Americans that they should be offended.

Sorry if I don't subscribe to that colonialistic thinking; I think the Native Americans can decide this issue for themselves.
 
GG said:
They are speaking...some aren't listening ;)
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Talking about yourself there, chief?

"According to an October 2013 story by The Associated Press, a poll of Native Americans revealed that 90 percent didn't find the term "Redskins" offensive."

Roger Goodell; "9 out of 10 Native Americans support the Redskins name"
 

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Look, you can't deny that Snyders PR has been woeful and embarrassing. Everything from bribes to shills to biased blinkered attitude. The articles from pft illustrating this is littered in this thread.

That's what I mean. It's a paid for biased poll for white corporate America by white corporate Americans. And white corporate America speaking for native Americans. Head in sand stuff.
 
A poll of only Native Americans is somehow a "white corporate America" poll??

And are you really going to quote Mike Florio and expect to be taken seriously? Hahaha.
 
Chadwiko said:
A poll of only Native Americans is somehow a "white corporate America" poll??

And are you really going to quote Mike Florio and expect to be taken seriously? Hahaha.
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Just like how prosecutors and defense lawyers pick out jurors that help their cause, think their way.

You're a grown man now Chadwiko. You really ought to think better than this.

Florio is a dick but on this topic he's right.
 
GG said:
Just like how prosecutors and defense lawyers pick out jurors that help their cause, think their way.

You're a grown man now Chadwiko. You really ought to think better than this.

Florio is a dick but on this topic he's right.
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It wasn't a Redskins poll. It was an unbiased poll by one of the top 3 media organisations in the world, the Associated Press.

Come on now, GG.
 
Chadwiko said:
It wasn't a Redskins poll. It was an unbiased poll by one of the top 3 media organisations in the world, the Associated Press.

Come on now, GG.
Click to expand...
Cmon yourself. They select a certain area or demographic that suits, that would embrace white America. They ask say 100 people and that's somehow 9/10 of all native American voices. How come they don't poll the oneida nation and see what the ratio is ;)

There are many of Native descent who are living in and embracing white america who object too.

To say 9/10 is garbage. It might not be 9/10 opposed but it's certainly not the other way. Irrespective the name is insensitive and many schools have embraced the change in the spirit of good will even without resorting to polls. Why won't Snyder? The answer to why he won't explains everything.
 
GG said:
Cmon yourself. They select a certain area or demographic that suits, that would embrace white America. They ask say 100 people and that's somehow 9/10 of all native American voices. How come they don't poll the oneida nation and see what the ratio is ;)
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Wrong again.

How the AP-GfK poll on the Washington Redskins was conducted

The Associated Press-GfK poll on the Washington Redskins was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications from April 11-15. It is based on landline telephone and cellphone interviews with a nationally representative random sample of 1,004 adults. Interviews were conducted with 601 respondents on landline telephones and 403 on cellular telephones.

Digits in the phone numbers dialed were generated randomly to reach households with unlisted and listed landline and cellphone numbers.

Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.

As is done routinely in surveys, results were weighted, or adjusted, to ensure that responses accurately reflect the population’s makeup by factors such as age, sex, education and race. In addition, the weighting took into account patterns of phone use — landline only, cellphone only and both types — by region.

No more than 1 time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 3.9 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all adults in the U.S. were polled.
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Now, i'm fine if you are personally opposed to the Redskins name GG. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

What annoys me though is when you post things that simply aren't true and try to pass them off as facts.

Who between you and me do you think has read more and knows more about this issue?

So, by all means, please continue to feel free to personally oppose the Redskins name. But please don't deny the fact that an overwhelming majority of Native Americans support the name, and that 4 in 5 Americans of all races support the name.
 
Chadwiko said:
Wrong again.



Now, i'm fine if you are personally opposed to the Redskins name GG. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

What annoys me though is when you post things that simply aren't true and try to pass them off as facts.

Who between you and me do you think has read more and knows more about this issue?

So, by all means, please continue to feel free to personally oppose the Redskins name. But please don't deny the fact that an overwhelming majority of Native Americans support the name, and that 4 in 5 Americans of all races support the name.
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That's what annoys me about you!

You've probably read more, but obviously I know/understand more.
 
GG said:
That's what annoys me about you!

You've probably read more, but obviously I know/understand more.
Click to expand...

Anyone who reads this last page of the forum will see one person posting facts and backing up their argument with citations, and one person posting conjecture and conspiracy theories.
 
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