Redskins are changing their name

ThePro
Posts: 3460
Joined: Wed May 15, 2019 2:12 am

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by ThePro » Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:29 pm

D-train wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:16 pm


Guessing he wouldn't be fan of Joe "you ain't black if you don't vote for me" Biden

Back then it was pretty clear what needed to be done. Change the discriminatory racist laws and those that mandated segregation. Thankfully that happened. Today, it is just "don't be racist" I haven't heard any "solutions" other than that so perhaps we have a lot of Malcolms but no MLKs.
Malcolm X came up with more tangible solutions than MLK ever did. You're misinformed. The solutions and demands have been clearly identified. Just like the 1960s they are scoffed at and met with vitriol and anger.

User avatar
Bil522
Posts: 2483
Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 12:52 am

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by Bil522 » Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:39 pm

Here is the definitive article written on the subject of the Redskin name change.....side note a team i coached actually played the Welpinit Redskins in a State B playoff game long ago.

"By Erik Lacitis
Seattle Times staff reporter
WELLPINIT, Stevens County — This little town of 928 — with its one grocery store, one gas station and one stop sign — is far, far away from the national controversies of the day.

To get here, you drive about an hour north of Spokane, past fields of barley, wheat and canola with yellow flowers, past the forests.

It is home for the Spokane Tribe of Indians, and for 107 years, the Wellpinit High School mascot name has been Redskins.

Wellpinit doesn’t particularly want to be part of stories about its mascot.

But the tribe gets calls because of the controversy 2,600 miles away in Washington, D.C., with the Redskins NFL team.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office last month canceled the team’s trademark registration, deeming the name disparaging to Native Americans. Various media outlets around the country, including this newspaper, have stopped using the name, except in stories about the controversy, because it is offensive.

In its defense, the Washington football team in 2013 linked to a list of 70 high schools using the Redskins name and later specifically referred to Wellpinit.

“One thing that annoys me,” says John Teters, registrar for the school district, “is that we’re used as an excuse for this asinine process. You name it, Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, whenever those names come up, the school gets called. ‘If you guys can do it, why can’t we?’ We’re somehow used as a justification.”

The school district isn’t in a big hurry to change the name and sees no big push for it.

The high school is the only one in this state using that name.

Last year, the Port Townsend School Board voted to abolish Redskins as its high school’s mascot. They’re now the Redhawks.

A list of school mascot names in this state, compiled by Marc Sheehan, a Federal Way teacher, shows a few Indians and Chiefs — also not appreciated by Native Americans — but mostly a lot of names along the lines of Eagles and Mustangs.

Michael Seyler has been on the Wellpinit School Board for 19 years. He says there might be a community meeting sometime to discuss the name, and maybe a vote, but nothing is scheduled.

“Casual interest” is how Seyler describes community concern about that “back East” controversy.

Take Clarence Le Bret, who at 90 says he’s the oldest male tribal member in town.

Controversy, what controversy, he says. “It’s the traditional name we always had.”

Le Bret says he helped raise five boys and two girls and would go to all the school sports games in which they played.

“After that I was sported out,” he says, and doesn’t much care about the NFL or any other team.

But with many here, the team-mascot name means a lot.

Here, the kids have their “Wellpinit Redskins” T-shirts and sweatshirts they wear to games or Spirit Week. At games, they chant, “Redskin Power!”

Says Kyra Antone, 17, who’s going into 12th grade and is wearing one of the T-shirts, “It’s not a negative name for us. Whenever I think of Redskins, I think of pride in our sports teams. There’s nothing wrong with being a 17-year-old Native American.”

How to react to the national news does seem to break down along generational lines.

“We don’t see it as a derogatory name. But if you ask a grandpa or grandma, they think of it differently,” says Brodie Ford, 17, who just graduated and is heading to nearby Whitworth University.

Ford says that in sports, when playing other schools, he didn’t hear “Redskins” used in a derogatory way.

But older tribal members sure do remember insults about their heritage, although it wasn’t the Redskins name that was used.

James Seyler, 46, from the high school’s class of 1986, who works for the tribe’s historic-preservation program, remembers his basketball days.

When playing at other schools, Wellpinit players were called derogatory names.

On a recent afternoon, on the school football field, Seyler is showing a couple of teens the techniques for building a teepee with 17 lodge poles for an upcoming contest.

Seyler wants to keep the mascot name.

“We shouldn’t change it because everybody in politics wants us to change the name,” he said. “We’ve been here for thousands for years. It’s people who weren’t raised here who are bothered by it.”

Still, for a number of Native Americans, the Redskins name is an insult that strikes at their emotions.

“This country was founded on bounties. I grew up with my dad talking about the genocide of Indians,” says Chet Bluff, 53. “This should be in the history books.”

Bluff says she was taught that “Redskin” refers to the bloodied scalp that bounty hunters used to show proof of a kill.

She says she told a white co-worker who asked what the “Redskin” controversy was about:

“Imagine my husband, my dad, my brother and granddaughter being killed and skinned for $800. Her jaw dropped,” says Bluff.

That the term is derived from the blood from the scalp of a Native American is in dispute, as is often the case with what is and isn’t historically provable.

Ives Goddard, emeritus senior linguist at the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Anthropology, in 2005 wrote a research paper on the term.

He says the assertion became popularized when American Indian rights activist Suzan Harjo said it on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1992.

“There wasn’t anything to support the connection,” says Goddard. “But that’s what everybody now thinks.”

In fact, he says, it was Indians who first came up with the term when the whites showed up in this continent: “You guys are white, we are red.” It became derogatory in later usage, he says.

And, adds Goddard, what’s acceptable “is based on today’s language,” and the term is clearly offensive to many.

Meanwhile, life ambles on in this quiet town.

Brodie Ford’s family is justifiably proud that he earned a full-ride college Gates Millennium scholarship.

He had to write six essays in his application.

In one essay, Ford told about his upbringing:

“When I was eight years old my dad began taking me to his farms, and for every day of the summer, I was down at the farms with my dad. He put me in his lap, and showed me how every single instrument on the tractor worked. To this very day, I remember everything that he taught me. During those hot, dry summer days, I learned how to ride a horse, drive a tractor, bail hay, and how to catch and tag a buffalo.”

In another essay, he concluded, “I’m just a kid from a rural reservation who wants to make a difference.”

Let the East Coast fester in the Redskins name controversy.

Says Ford, “I use the name proudly. I wear it with respect."



Michael K.
Posts: 12696
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 5:27 am

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by Michael K. » Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:52 pm

I forgot you have B school ties!

Moses Lake still goes by the Chiefs, but that word isn't derogatory. Seems to me like Redskins are. Wellpinit is on the reservations. Seems to me they have more reason to use that term than anyone else. Surprises me that they use a term that many consider derogatory, but isn't it a little different if Native Americans are calling themselves that?

Obviously I have no idea, but I know people that take offense to the term and hate that major sports teams use them. Not really my place to tell them they can't be offended. But it seems to me that someone on the reservation using the term is a bit different than the cities of Cleveland and DC...right?

User avatar
Donn Beach
Posts: 16746
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 1:06 am

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by Donn Beach » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:00 pm

I worked a job in Orofino Idaho in 1972, the Dworshak dam, the state mental hospital is located there, I found the the high school mascot funny, the Maniacs. I guess they still are called that

DavidGee24
Posts: 8959
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:24 pm
Location: Phillips Ranch, CA

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by DavidGee24 » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:03 pm

D-train wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:16 pm
Back then it was pretty clear what needed to be done. Change the discriminatory racist laws and those that mandated segregation. Thankfully that happened. Today, it is just "don't be racist".
Might as well go around saying "Don't be greedy" or "Don't be lustful". The people that have racism ingrained in them are just like that, and trying to cram things down people's throats isn't going to accomplish much beyond getting on everyone's nerves. Worse, a lot of morons are out there doing stupid things and people are getting killed for nothing. Hard to say that the murder of people like David Dorn was worth tearing down some statues and getting the Redskins' name changed. Not to mention that we've got a small minority of the population deciding things for everyone else.

User avatar
D-train
Posts: 75808
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:33 am
Location: Quincy, MA

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by D-train » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:04 pm

Hopefully these aren't the demands of which you speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=085u0NnAgjA

I appreciate you perspective Pro and I don't doubt your experience and I hope everything improves for everyone; just trying to provide alternate perspectives that need to be recognized as well imo.
dt

ThePro
Posts: 3460
Joined: Wed May 15, 2019 2:12 am

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by ThePro » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:08 pm

D-train wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:04 pm
Hopefully these aren't the demands of which you speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=085u0NnAgjA

I appreciate you perspective Pro and I don't doubt your experience and I hope everything improves for everyone; just trying to provide alternate perspectives that need to be recognized as well imo.
I don't acknowledge or indulge in anything from Candace Owens.

User avatar
D-train
Posts: 75808
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:33 am
Location: Quincy, MA

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by D-train » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:09 pm

Donn Beach wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:00 pm
I worked a job in Orofino Idaho in 1972, the Dworshak dam, the state mental hospital is located there, I found the the high school mascot funny, the Maniacs. I guess they still are called that
I wonder if Arnold Horshack went to Dworshak?

Jesus I just found out I have to have my third Covid test in month. Fun times.
dt

User avatar
D-train
Posts: 75808
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2019 1:33 am
Location: Quincy, MA

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by D-train » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:10 pm

ThePro wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:08 pm
D-train wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:04 pm
Hopefully these aren't the demands of which you speak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=085u0NnAgjA

I appreciate you perspective Pro and I don't doubt your experience and I hope everything improves for everyone; just trying to provide alternate perspectives that need to be recognized as well imo.
I don't acknowledge or indulge in anything from Candace Owens.
You think she is a poser/fake?
dt

DavidGee24
Posts: 8959
Joined: Wed May 01, 2019 6:24 pm
Location: Phillips Ranch, CA

Re: Redskins are changing their name

Post by DavidGee24 » Mon Jul 06, 2020 5:35 pm

Bil522 wrote:
Mon Jul 06, 2020 4:39 pm
In its defense, the Washington football team in 2013 linked to a list of 70 high schools using the Redskins name and later specifically referred to Wellpinit.

“One thing that annoys me,” says John Teters, registrar for the school district, “is that we’re used as an excuse for this asinine process. You name it, Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, whenever those names come up, the school gets called. ‘If you guys can do it, why can’t we?’ We’re somehow used as a justification.”[/i]
Kind of like whenever you read an article about a white person using the "N" word you see a lot of the same tired comments going, "Well, they call each other that", the two-wrongs-make-a-right mentality. Black people who call each other the "N" word are dumbasses who don't justify imitation of their behavior.

Same thing here. If you call your high schools "Redskins" you can't really throw a fit if a professional sports team does likewise, and to the Native American people's credit few do. It's got to be both ways or no ways. With the "N" word it really should be no ways (except maybe in the occasional comedy setting). "Redskins"? A bit harder of a call there.

Post Reply