Team names are part of a rich sports tradition, bonding fans with the units they love.
The Cowboys. The Packers. The Browns.
Those names mean something. They mean tradition, glory. They mean Roger Staubach. Brett Favre. Jim Brown.
The Redskins and Indians. Those names mean something, too. They mean centuries of cruelty and oppression. And it is time — past time — they left the sporting landscape.
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The Washington football team and the Cleveland baseball team are “reviewing” their names, with the strong possibility that the designations will be replaced. Outcries have arisen before, but the voices are louder now, fortified by the increased sensitivity following the death of George Floyd. People are listening, including the billionaire sports owners who had always been deaf to these pleas.
Both names are egregious, testament to decades of insensitivity that have afflicted professional football and baseball. Some people may say they are just names. No, names carry power and authority. Names that denigrate the people they represent make it easier to treat those people with disrespect and, worse, cruelty.
This is a hard time in America. Floyd’s killing exposed the rot in our society, creating a movement to remove that rot, the ugly stain of hate and racism. The momentum grows daily.
The Washington football team has a troubling history. The name was bad enough, but its transgressions went beyond that. It was the last team in the NFL to integrate — in 1962.
In 1961, the Washington football team faced the Cleveland Browns. It was a symbolic meeting, enlightenment versus bigotry. The Browns, along with the Los Angeles Rams, were the first pro football team to integrate in 1947. Shirley Povich, the great sports writer, documented the game for the Washington Post.
“From 25 yards out, (Jim) Brown was served the football by Milt Plum on a pitch-out and he integrated the Redskins’ goal line with more than deliberate speed,” Povich wrote. “Brown fled the 25 yards like a man in an uncommon hurry and the Redskins’ goal line, at least, became interracial.”
Today, another Cleveland team is experiencing its own problems with racial insensitivity. The term “Indian” may not seem as outrageous as the Washington football team’s name, but it carries its own legacy of bigotry. Christopher Columbus is believed to have saddled Native Americans with the term out of the mistaken notion that he had reached Eastern Asia, and it remains a cruel reminder of the colonization that led to genocide.
Washington owner Dan Snyder had said for years that he would “never” change the team name, but that was before top sponsors started objecting, including FedEx. It is discouraging that a moral issue devolved into a financial issue. What happened to doing the right thing? As Bob Dylan once sang, “Money doesn’t talk … it swears.”
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“In the last few weeks, we have had ongoing discussions with Dan, and we are supportive of this important step,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement, according to NFL.com.
In 2015, a federal judge ruled that the name should be changed because it “may disparage” Native Americans. It would be a short-lived victory. The group of Native Americans who had sued dropped their fight after the Supreme Court ruled, in a separate case, that offensive names could not undermine federal trademark protections.
Before the 2019 season, the Cleveland baseball team announced it would remove the team logo from caps and uniforms. The move was long overdue. Chief Wahoo, the team mascot, was an offensive caricature, painted in bright red with a broad smile that belied the history of the Native American.
“I know in the past, when I’ve been asked about whether it’s our name or the Chief Wahoo, I think I would usually answer and say I know that we’re never trying to be disrespectful,” Cleveland Manager Terry Francona told CNN. “And I still feel that way. But I don’t think that’s a good enough answer today. I think it’s time to move forward.”
Francona is right. It is time to turn our moral calendars to jibe with our wall calendars. Leave the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries where they belong — in a dark, ugly past.
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July 13, 2020 at 01:00AM
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Editorial: Insensitive team names need to change - San Antonio Express-News
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