Brian Shea isn’t really a sports fan, but he does live in the D.C. area, and the advertisement that ran during the NBA Finals caused him to reflect on the power of words to hurt.
After almost ten years in Australia, I returned to the United States at the age of ten with no memories of the country I was born in. Driving down the road with my American mother one day, I heard her gasp and point at a local restaurant sign.
“My God,” she said. “What century are we in?”
The restaurant was called “Sambo’s” and the name meant nothing to me. After ten years of singing “God Save the Queen” at Australian school assemblies in a Hogwarts-like uniform, I was unaware of the term’s racial stigma.
“Little Black Sambo” was a book series in the late 19th Century featuring a caricatured south Indian child who many believed was depicted as a racial stereotype. The term “Sambo” would eventually become associated with racism towards African-Americans, something my mother from Brooklyn knew all too well.
I didn’t know it at all, but my mother told me that you don’t need to be on the receiving end of wrong to know what it is. And if you have hurt someone, regardless of your stated or true intentions, you are usually in the wrong to some degree.
[M]y mother told me that you don’t need to be on the receiving end of wrong to know what it is.
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Sambo’s became “Sam’s” some years later and eventually went bankrupt under the weight of a term its owners insisted was never meant to offend.
I haven’t thought of Sam’s in decades, but I’ve lived around Washington, D.C. for over twenty years and Sam’s has reemerged from my archived memories as the region debates whether its football team, the Washington Redskins, should change its name.
Native American groups claim the name is racist. And if the NFL had a team named the “Blackskins” with a Maasai warrior as a mascot, I suspect we’d be having a very different conversation.
The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation aired a television spot the other night during Game 3 of the NBA Finals urging the team to change its name. In the video, a montage of Native Americans accompanies a narrated list of names they use to describe themselves: “Proud, Blackfoot, Patriot,” and so on. The ad ends with the words, “Native Americans call themselves many things. The one thing they don’t…”, after which an image of a Redskins football helmet appears before fading to black.
Many diehard Redskins fans, many of whom are middle- and upper-class whites, insist the name isn’t racist and that calls to change it are just political correctness gone awry. Besides, many argue, the team’s affiliation with Native Americans is intended to honor their spirit and traditions. The team recently hired Washington-based lobbying firm McGuireWoods Consulting to help manage its image.
[I]f my actions offend but I insist they are not offensive, should the offended accept my explanation and concede or should I modify my behavior?
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It’s a simple question, really: if my actions offend but I insist they are not offensive, should the offended accept my explanation and concede or should I modify my behavior? For many Redskins fans, the result is a stalemate.
The First Amendment offers tempting sanctuary to those who wish to retain the team’s name without the stigma of racism. But whether the First Amendment protects the team’s right to use “Redskins” or not is less important than whether we should want it to.
The measure of our civilization is not our adherence to the First Amendment but when we choose to invoke it. When our society grows accustomed to equating free speech with the defense of malice, it fertilizes that malevolent side of itself that made such amendments necessary in the first place. The tyranny that follows comes not from the state, but from the citizens themselves who tolerate only expression distilled from their own national, ideological, or racial prejudice. It then becomes very easy to reject the suggestion that the choice of “Redskins” for a football team could possibly be offensive to the very race the name describes. The architecture of law allows them to have it both ways.
Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling wanted it both ways and it didn’t work very well for him. The fact that his words were hurtful to an entire race is, to him, far outweighed by the fact that he provided jobs to African-American players who should be grateful for it. His interview with Anderson Cooper to contain the damage of his recorded rant cemented his reputation as a rambling plantation owner from 1865 who still doesn’t understand that the world he thought he lived in is gone.
Stating admiration for a race’s achievements or listing the favors done for it will probably not convince Native Americans that a word they find racist is not, in fact, racist. And that leaves those who oppose changing the name right back where they started.
Stating admiration for a race’s achievements or listing the favors done for it will probably not convince Native Americans that a word they find racist is not, in fact, racist.
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In the end, proponents of the Redskins team name will either learn the power of words or they will not. They will also learn that words have the power to touch different people to different degrees. If I sometimes forget that fact, I try to remember my mother’s lesson that the value of words lies not in semantics, but in their emotional force.
I do not call my wife a “bitch,” though the First Amendment might say I can. I would win my court case, to be sure. I do not call her a “bitch” because it hurts and that should be enough, even if I will never experience the emotional weight of a word only women can appreciate.
My mother idolized the Dalai Lama. His books lined her shelves and she even kept a framed photo of the Tibetan religious leader in her home. He once said, “Our prime purpose in life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”
In the argument over the Redskins’ name, emotions have been invoked to support both sides. Admiration for Native American culture, not racism, motivates the desire to retain the word “Redskins,” some say. The residual pain of racism, on the other hand, demands it be changed.
In the end, those citizens who would not change the Redskins’ name must decide for themselves how much they care that one word hurts.
Your view is that the team should change its name. You didn’t answer my question about “Canucks”. You the Vancouver NHL team? Why is that OK and Redskins so deplorable in your view, particularly in light of the fact that the history of the Redskins name is not racist in use or intent. Someone ignorant came along and decided it sounded racist and now a beloved team must buckle to an ignorant view? HELL NO!!!! I grew up a Redskins fan and ;when I was a young boy I rooted for the Redskins with particular vigor when they played the… Read more »
And that survey you cite has been called into question as well:http://ipclinic.org/2014/02/11/11-reasons-to-ignore-the-10-year-old-annenberg-survey-about-the-washington-football-teams-offensive-name/.
Bottom line, you’re going to believe whatever you’re going to believe regardless. And, that’s your right. But dismissing it as “liberal” also doesn’t get to the bottom of the issue, since it being “liberal” or “conservative” doesn’t validate or invalidate a particular view. Liberals and conservatives can be right or wrong, so one’s ideological stance is irrelevant.
The survey you cite was an inadequate sample size. 400 “Native” Americans were polled. The sample size was too small and the method for verifying the ethnic make up of those polled was dubious. Liberals will rely on the thinnest of evidence to prove a point. Redskins is bad, but Canucks is OK? Do you know what a Canuck is? It is the equivalent of the “N” word for Canadians.
Actually the Annenberg Public Policy Center study says they don’t really care: http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/Downloads/Political_Communication/NAES/2004_03_redskins_09-24_pr.pdf
The U. of California study reflects the recent political uproar and leftist news media attention to the issue. Left alone Native Americans probably would not care as only 9% did in 2004, not so long ago.
When you Australians make amends to the Aborigines I might listen to what you have to say about changing the Redskins name.
Actually, a U. California poll recently found that 67% of Native Americans polled do, in fact, find it offensive.http://www.buzzfeed.com/lindseyadler/native-americans-offended-by-racial-slur
I am 4th generation 100% Irish American. I am not particularly bellicose, but the University of Notre Dame’s football team nickname has labeled me as such. I am offended. They should change the name. That is a slippery slope indeed my friend. Not all Native Americans find it offensive. What percentage of Native Americans finding the name offensive would you require before compelling a change? The fact is the name has no historical reference to skin color or race. The historical context of the name comes from a practice that the Algonquin and their French allies in the French and… Read more »
Game over. Hate loses.