Discussion for article #229660
I enjoyed this segment except for the attempt to pretend the Annenberg poll wasn’t scientific and shouldn’t be trusted, which TDS ate up uncritically. I’m all for changing this stupid creepy name, but when you’re denying poll results something has gone wrong.
The debate over the name will descend to increasingly disturbing levels.
It can’t ever get any better based on building animosities.
And the team-- and it’s fans-- should take the high road.
Don’t be pariahs.
Just change it.
The mint to be made in new merchandise alone is worth it.
jw1
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I have a hard time believing that a bunch of drunk football fans tailgating in a parking lot would say nasty, racist things to Native Americans.
Oh wait, no I don’t.
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Anyone surprised? Anyone at all?
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I don’t understand the weird defensiveness
If can’t believe you actually said that.
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Yesterday, several thousand people marched on TCF Bank stadium in Minneapolis to protest the Washington team’s nickname. Afterward, the Minnesota Vikings defeated Washington 29-26. Karma.
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To add insult to injury, one Washington team bus rear ended the other team bus on the way to the game. heheheheh
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The Washington RearEndSkids?
Could work.
jw1
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I would love to see the raw footage of TDS video between the fans and the native americans . . . seriously, post it onto Youtube and let it go viral.
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I’d like to see that on the pre-game round table:
“Terry Bradshaw, care to comment on the vile things being said just outside the stadium this morning? No? How about you Howie? Coach Jimmy?”
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Glad to know the fans of the Washington NFL team are continuing the long racist tradition of the founding owner, George Marshall. I am sure he would be proud. .
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The Washington Douches. Red and yellow color scheme works well. Very sanitary. Easy to use. What’s not to love?
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Truthin’ it, thanks Jon…
I actually expected more turmoil. I did notice a lot of places where there were empty seats-did they throw out protestors?
" the Native Americans went to the stadium and people said the most vile shit to them"
IOW behaved like icons of … Washington fuhbeau fayans.
Dan Snyder deliberately evades the forms of review from administrative tribunal decisions going back centuries, with clear intent to bully, hey, that’s just showing solidarity with his fan base.
If I’m a player on that team, I’m taking the paycheck while instructing my agent to work like the dickens to get me traded somewhere else, anywhere else, even Oakland or Jacksonville. The stench of being a Washington player during the Snyder era is going to take time and effort to remove.
Poll results can be very misleading depending on how they are structured and to whom they are directed. I don’t know how many people I’ve met who claim to be of Native American descent but can’t point to an actual member of their ancestry who was.
I can, incidentally, but given how distantly I am related to her, I wouldn’t claim to be Native American.
If I remember correctly, the poll asked for self-identified Native Americans…which is the problem then and there. As I said, there’s a lot of people who claim Native American descent who don’t have any at all. I knew one person who swore up, down and sideways he was part Cherokee and watched him go ballistic when it turned out that he wasn’t. His ancestors had been lying because the “Cherokee” in his family was actually Black.
I’m not saying that the poll was necessarily wrong, but you have to be very, very careful with polling data.
The Deadskins are the phoniest team this side of the Dallas Cowboys. The owner has alientaed the community and fan base to a degree that I think this “rump faction” must be total idiots. There is no link to Indian tribes in the DC area or early Indian players (like Cleveland Indians, who have a more interesting history). the Deadskins ticket base is heavily weighted toward trade associations and the like–if you know people in that world, you can always get a ticket. Out of towers like me from actual sports towns have never taken the Deadskins seriously and the idea that some group of drunks who probably live in outer suburbia care about the name make me think the team is even more ludicrous. It’s a shame that ludicrously phony cities like Atlanta already have teams, becausemy next suggestion would be for the Deadskins to find a city that fits their level of phoniness.
Artemisia: Don’t dismiss all the whites who claim to have Cherokee ancestry. LOTS of white people really do. Now, if they claim they’re descended from a Cherokee princess, they’re full of shit. But having Cherokee blood is not unusual if you have ancestors from the southeast. The Cherokee were encouraged to adopt the white men’s culture and, before the trail of tears anyway, lots of them married in and had more-or-less assimilated.
I know my family has actual Cherokee blood rather than black-but-we’ll-say-it’s-indian blood because we know where it came from and my father and I still look quite Cherokee, even this far down the family tree.
However, distant as the relation is, I don’t consider myself Cherokee. If I’d been raised in a tribe or even to a family that had preserved the traditions, I might feel differently. I consider myself white because the majority of my ancestry is mixed European. My Cherokee blood just means I tan well and people occasionally ask me where I’m from, sure that I have something exotic in my lineage and curious to know what it is.
I don’t think it’s fair to claim you’re Native American if you were not raised in that community or in a family that preserved those traditions. You are of partly Native American descent, but you’re not a Native American. That takes more than just having a distant ancestor who was Cherokee.
IMHO
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