Remember about Redskins: A chief factor of sports teams' names is aim for blush of victory

By Dexter Duggan, Substack

PHOENIX — Interesting that a Native American organization wants to change the name of football’s Washington Commanders back to what it had been, the Washington Redskins.

Under the proclamation “Educate NOT Eradicate,” the Native American Guardian’s Association (nagaeducation.org) describes itself as “a 501c3 non-profit organization advocating for increased education about Native Americans, especially in public educational institutions, and greater recognition of Native American Heritage through the high-profile venues of sports and other public platforms.”

For decades Native names on teams weren’t regarded as taunts. When Dad took little pre-teeners my sister and me to an occasional Indianapolis Indians baseball game, we popcorn eaters expected to see athletic accomplishment, not ethnic mockery. Nor did Dad feel the need to warn us that we shouldn’t sneer at “Indians” while watching players display skills of hitting home runs and stealing bases.

However, the day arrived that the social elitist establishment decided for itself — and therefore, of course, for everyone else, to whom it presumes to dictate — that some Native names on teams were intolerable bigotry and must be discarded. Hardly anyone else had perceived this, so it took a lot of twisting and turning to try to make everyone else agree. They still didn’t agree, but the elitists finally can get so exasperated with their social inferiors that they just ram things through anyway.

(Somehow certain names dodged the assault, like Kansas City Chiefs, even though that was as Native a name as others. Oh, wait. Maybe “Chiefs” was exempted because that was sort of like saying the Top Guys, whereas “Redskins” might just be guys on the assembly line or working behind the lunch counter or on the sales floor. If it had been “Redskin Business Executives,” would that have received the okay? When some such Business Executives had finished off supremacist Gen. George Armstrong Custer and his salesmen, they showed they knew how to close a deal.)

This present-day establishment’s attitude of white superiority used to identify itself as such when shoving around others, whether the others also were white or some other skin persuasion. But now, to maintain its power while hiding its identity in these super-progressive times, this white upper class passes itself off as anything but. Maybe call it white superiority trying to hide under a deep suntan.

NAGA’s website recognizes the trickery when it says, “The truth of the matter is the opposition doesn’t believe Native Americans are capable of self-determining whether something is offensive or revered. The opposition looks to silence Native opinions.”

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