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Stereotypes and Other Offensive Depictions in Sports Mascots and Team Names
Heartlash
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I am an unapologetic Washington Redskins fan. I love watching the team play, win or lose, and am happy to give 3-4 hours of my Sunday to the couch. However, I cannot formulate any defense regarding the team's name. I haven't ever been able to, really. In fact, I usually ironically bring up just how racist it is when I tell people I'm a fan (e.g. "I love our nation's capital's team, in spite of its horribly racist name").
So naturally, I was not excited in a manner expected of a fan when I heard that the team had won a recent lawsuit regarding use of the trademark. I would've sided with the plaintiff on the issue. The name clearly treads on their cultural heritage.
But this issue brings up a series of intriguing moral questions for debate. Does the name still evoke anything hateful or degrading, or has it detached itself completely from the cultural issue? Likewise, is it worth forcing the organization to shovel out tons of cash to "re-brand" itself? What about other teams in similar positions? If the Redskins need to change their name, what about the Chiefs, Indians, Blackhawks, or the Braves?
So naturally, I was not excited in a manner expected of a fan when I heard that the team had won a recent lawsuit regarding use of the trademark. I would've sided with the plaintiff on the issue. The name clearly treads on their cultural heritage.
But this issue brings up a series of intriguing moral questions for debate. Does the name still evoke anything hateful or degrading, or has it detached itself completely from the cultural issue? Likewise, is it worth forcing the organization to shovel out tons of cash to "re-brand" itself? What about other teams in similar positions? If the Redskins need to change their name, what about the Chiefs, Indians, Blackhawks, or the Braves?
Heartlash on
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I am appalled that the Indians haven't been forced to, or haven't out of a sense of basic fucking decency, gotten another logo.
Holy shit.
Even when they suck.
Probably the most offensive name too. Damn shame that.
I GIS'ed that and wow you are so right!
fuck baseball sometimes
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
It would take a hideous amount of protesting to get any of these teams to reconsider, or years and years of economic hardship, a new owner, and maybe even a new city.
Clearly never going to happen to the Redskins. Could happen to the Chiefs, Braves (Which I don't really find offensive) or the Indians (insert logo here) by the above method.
The Cleveland Indians franchise claims the following (cite):
"For more than 30 years, the club has said the nickname "Indians" was chosen in a newspaper contest to honor Louis Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian who played for the Cleveland Spiders from 1897-99...Cleveland fans sometimes argue the nickname was meant as a tribute to Sockalexis and not an insult."
From the same article, a counterargument:
"But Ellen Staurowsky, an associate professor at Ithaca College who wrote a paper on the subject in the Sociology of Sports Journal last December, said the idea that there was a contest is a mistake. "That's completely fake," she told the Plain Dealer. "It's a misrepresentation of what actually happened. There is no evidence the team was named after Sockalexis."
I agree the Chief Wahoo logo is offensive but the name itself may or may not be.
hummusandkimchi.blogspot.com
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/FriedRice-1814/hero/11834264
I would root for that team. I would root HARD for that team.
hummusandkimchi.blogspot.com
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/FriedRice-1814/hero/11834264
True in the legal sense. A better systemic question would be, should these sports organizations (NFL, NHL, MLB, etc) have an institutionalized policy that doesn't permit such names?
That, I could get behind.
Though I think name-wise, "redskins" are the only real offenders. The Chiefs, Indians, Braves, and so on aren't inherently offensive, unless you also rail against the Vikings, 49ers, Raiders, and every other team named after a group of people. Saying, "You guys are so awesome we should name a team after you" isn't inherently offensive.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Even then, part of that (at least with American Indians) is that the name is used to imply a kind of mindless savagery. Which, obviously, can still be bad.
I think the only solution for the Washington team is to change their nickname to Cardinal. Maybe have a tree logo.
You're muckin' with a G!
Or it could be argued it's a tribute to a group of historical warriors.
The UND Fighting Sioux are pretty big around this area for their hockey team and I remember there being a controversy over having the word "fighting" in thier name. I always took it as a tribute to the great Sioux warriors in history (especially given that UND is in Grand Forks North Dakota). I guess some take it as an impication that all Sioux were mindless savages though.
I think a big part of it is whether you're looking to be offended or not.
The Fighting Sioux name is toast.
?
You're muckin' with a G!
Wouldn't "Fighting Sioux" imply that they were referring to a specific subset of Sioux, and that there existed other, more gentle Sioux?
No?
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
I mean, the Viking is a stereotype too. As are the 49ers. Hell, even the Patriots are a stereotype.
Yeah I remember there being a lawsuit or something but I don't follow the team at all so I wasn't sure. The first result I got in google was a UND athletics webiste that has "The Fighting Sioux" across the top in banner form. *shrug*
That seems like a weird coincidence.
Part of the problem is that Sioux is the name of an actual tribe, which means the tribe retains control of the name, which is also why the Redskins have had more trouble than the much more offensive Indians (on that subject, if the Indians claim to be named after a specific person, why not use a simplified painting of said person as the logo and make the mascot an impersonator?). It's kind of like how a team can't just name themselves The Fighting Obamas without permission.
On the Indians:
Holy shit, that had better be sarcasm.
I think the situation changes given specific historical context. Tribes native to North America were effectively desimated by the culture that now uses their stereotypes in some sports teams. It's significantly more offensive than invoking ancient warrior stereotypes like Vikings, etc.
It'd be like a neonazi soccer team with the name "The Fightin' Hebrews". Well, maybe not THAT absurd, but sort of...
See this is the point right here.
Using other ethnicities would be clearly seen as racist in this instance. Why is the old fashioned native american stereotype acceptable? It doesn't matter at all if it's a "positive" warrior stereotype. People have a right to say, "I do not want my people and my people's history represented this way".
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
I don't think that analogy really works; the "culture" in this country hasn't been killing off Native Americans for at least a hundred years.
It'd be sort of like a modern German soccer team calling itself "The Fightin' Hebrews".
So, still really retarded, but not nearly as bad.
sidenote: am I the only one who thinks it would be hilarious to have a team called "The Indians" who used, say, Gandhi as a mascot?
I would not protest, though, if they were to decide to change their name to, say, the Washington Pigskins.
What is absurd is that the name of our Basketball team, the Bullets, was deemed offensive enough to change, but Redskins is not.
And always has.
I guess I am desensitized to it growing up near Cleveland.
Indians don't kill people, bullets kill people.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
And now we have this ugly thing
So I think it can really go too far sometimes. Although the ugly second logo isn't their fault, it's Gene Nichol's.
Anyway, the 'hurf durf its just another stereotype like the Raiders' thing might actually work if, you know, American Indians weren't in roughly the same boat as Australian Aborigines (stuck on reservations, shitty life prospects, dreadful health stats, underesourced compared to the general population on every front except for some dang poker machines). 'Raiders' don't really exist. 'Vikings' don't either, since they're all now suicidal accountants and novelists. Indians do exist, and they're having a pretty rough time of it. The icons rightfully feel like putting the boot in.
I can't imagine anyone here naming an AFL team 'the fighting Boongs', even with a substantial number of A-grade players being Aboriginal. Which actually brings me to another point; how many native americans are playing A-grade baseball? Far as I'm aware, its still very much a honky game. And when you get a bunch of clueless members of Dude Nation together to come up with marketing imagery, well, this is what happens.
Personally, I take all kinds of offense at the Fighting Irish. I want money or something. Dude is a midget, has a damn green tailcoat and a shamrock on his hat. That's not an Irishman, it's a leprechaun. THANKS. They should draw him all drunk like Andy Capp.
The original changing was completely voluntary but there is a strong belief that the university was given a large sports fields area, that sits right next to a casino in Milwaukee, from the local tribe because they changed the name.
Apperantly, it's more accepted because Notre Dame has a history as an Irish school, so it's seen as a group owning its own name rather than using a groups likeness without permission.
I wasn't actually advocating it.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=127330&title=Trail-of-Cheers
Although I would totally buy a T Shirt of that if I didn't think I'd get my ass beat.