What's in a Name?

In the current edition of ESPN Magazine, Howard Bryant’s column delves into exactly why, in the wake of the events surrounding Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, so few professional athletes, including the many African Americans in their ranks, have spoken out. Bryant’s piece is highly recommended, touching lucidly on “fault lines of race and class,” and “the growing culture of militarism that is now everywhere in America.” But I’d like to use one peculiar, provocative element in Bryant’s column as a jumping off point for an entirely different conversation, if one that also sits unsteadily on “fault lines of race and class.” That subtle provocation occurs smack in the middle of Bryant’s report on the near-silence from pro jocks re: Ferguson:

“In the wake of curfews, arrests and tear gas, the St. Louis Rams offered tickets to the youth of Ferguson; some of the Washington football players held their hands up as they emerged from the tunnel before a preseason game, adopting the ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ symbol of protest in solidarity with a community roiling.”

How ironic that virtually the only professional athletes in America willing to take the risk of making public their support for the Black folks, and especially the young Black males, of Ferguson, Missouri are the very athletes who play for a team whose mascot Bryant cannot in good conscious even mention: the Washington Redskins.

The controversy surrounding the Washington football club’s mascot has reached a crescendo during a summer which saw the team lose its trademark protection from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (a ruling the team is, predictably, appealing), fifty United States senators sign a letter urging the NFL to take action and force a name change, and the announcement this week by the New York Daily News that it will no longer include the word Redskins in its newspaper (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/sack-article-1.1926865), an announcement that follows on the heels of the hometown Washington Post’s editorial page announcing that it will no longer print the word Redskins either (though the Post’s sports page will continue to refer to the team as the Redskins). (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/washington-post-editorials-will-no-longer-use-redskins-for-the-local-nfl-team/2014/08/22/1413db62-2940-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html )

But before delving into the reasons that 71% of Americans still believe the team should not change its name (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/new-poll-says-large-majority-of-americans-believe-redskins-should-not-change-name/2014/09/02/496e3dd0-32e0-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html), and that team owner Daniel Snyder has, per NBC’s Al Michaels, stated that the team will change its name “over my (Snyder’s) dead body,” some personal history is in order. I have been a Washington Redskins fan since moving within their TV broadcast territory as a 6-year old just at the dawn of the team’s golden age, a ten year burst in which the franchise would bring home three Super Bowl championships under the guidance of likable obnoxious rich guy (team owner) Jack Kent Cooke, California surfer dude (general manager) Bobby Beathard, and nascent NASCAR kingpin (head coach) Joe Gibbs. Everything about the team was fun, especially the winning, but also the nicknames (Hogs, Smurfs, Fun Bunch, etc.) and the cast of characters, e.g. the performance art of Hall of Fame running back John Riggins passing out drunk on the floor of a White House dinner after telling Justice O’Connor “Loosen up, Sandy Baby.”

But all good things must come to an end, and before long Cooke was dead, Beathard was guiding the San Diego Chargers to their first ever Super Bowl appearance, and Joe Gibbs was winning the Daytona 500. The Daniel Snyder era, with perpetual mediocrity punctuated by brief bursts of total incompetence, had begun. Not even Gibbs, in his brief second run with the team, could put things right; he got the hell out of Dodge after squeaking into the playoffs enabled him to leave with his dignity, and reputation, largely intact. It hasn’t been much fun to be a Redskins fan for the last twenty years, and without the fun to distract you, there’s that name. Just sitting there. On my 1987 Super Bowl t-shirt. On my 1982 Super Bowl Coke bottle. Talking to me. Telling me that the reason I was a Redskins fan for all the good years without once even thinking about the implications of the team’s name was because I could. Which doing things because you can without even thinking about them is the very definition of white privilege. And I continued not even thinking about it even several years into the losing, until a girlfriend (now ex) who had worked actively to change the University of Illinois’ Chief Illiniwek mascot as an undergraduate at Champagne-Urbana, looked at me a certain way whenever I used my MBNA Washington Redskins Visa card. Which is how my ’87 t-shirt is looking at me right about now. My privilege, singing “Hail to the Redskins” without ever once thinking about the words coming out of my mouth, was undone because my girlfriend made me think. Getting white folks to stop and think, and then hopefully feel, is the only way we ever change, and was the chief strategy of Martin Luther King’s nonviolent resistance movement.

Fast forward to 2014 and, slowly, more folks, white and otherwise, are beginning to stop and think about the name of the football franchise that represents our nation’s capital. While 71% of Americans still think its hunky dory if the Redskins keep their name, that number is significantly lower than 1992’s 89%. And, his “over my dead body” stance notwithstanding, Daniel Snyder may be starting to see the handwriting on the wall, as rumors have begun to circulate that Snyder may be willing to change the name for the right stadium deal (http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/shutdown-corner/former-gm--dan-snyder-might-drop-redskins-name-for-new-stadium--super-bowl-144942689.html). But given that the latter is currently mere internet speculation, as well as the fact that Snyder and his minions have been mounting an aggressive defense of their beloved mascot, including a creepy new charity campaign aimed at select American Indian tribes, the task of answering the arguments floated in favor of keeping the name is still at hand. The four most oft repeated arguments turn out to be, respectively, false, (almost) real, stonewalling, and ironic.

The false argument, and one put forward in bad faith, is that the name Redskins is intended to honor American Indians. This is patently absurd, mirroring other lies such as segregation’s “separate but equal” and Fox News’ “fair and balanced.” In all three of these cases, the lie functions to announce the real intentions (i.e., respectively, making sport of a dominated civilization, terrorizing Blacks, and shilling for the neoliberal militarists) in a socially acceptable manner. The truth is that using and maintaining the name Redskins is just a perpetual game of Cowboys and Indians, a game that has never been about honoring American Indians, but about casting them as brutal savages to be overcome by western civilization. Cowboys and Indians is the children’s version of a ritual, here being played by grown men and women, the sole purpose of which is to absolve (European) Americans of any lingering guilt over genocide.

The only (quasi) real argument being made in favor of keeping the name goes something like this: “You’re just a bunch of uptight liberals trying to ruin our harmless fun.” Real as in honest, if only honest to a point. Honest that it is a lot of fun playing Cowboys and Indians (Redskins fans claim to hate the Cowboys, when really we’re all Cowboys fans too, enjoying with our Dallas brethren the thrill of a victory that delivered an entire continent; the only difference is that we get to play the Indian while our Dallas brethren get to play the Cowboy), but deeply disingenuous in its denial of the incalculable harm done to an entire people.

The (not quite) real argument is closely related to the argument that is used more frequently than all of the others combined, i.e. the stonewalling maneuver of stating some version of “Man, I’m not into all that political correctness stuff.” This strategy depends on the logic that 1) all reasonable people recognize political correctness for what it is- a liberal mind control device that deflects our attention from attending to matters that are actually important, 2) and therefore anything judged to be politically correct can be dismissed out of hand, 3) and furthermore the concern over the Redskins name is a classic case of political correctness run amok. Repressed and implicit in this logic is the nefarious belief that the bloody history between European colonists and indigenous American Indians, not to mention the current relations, are of negligible importance. Which is to say, it doesn’t matter because the victors have already accrued their spoils.

The final, ironic argument is perhaps the darkest: “We must keep the Redskins name because it is a source of unity for the people of the District of Columbia and the surrounding suburbs.” Putting aside the fact that this so-called unity is entirely non-contingent on the name Redskins, i.e. it has been just as readily provided by the Ravens in Baltimore despite the city’s historic connection to the name Colts, let us note what we are really saying when we claim that the price of the unity between Blacks, Whites, Latinos and Asians is paid with the name Redskins: It (North America) is ours now.