Judge Sides With Redskins in Team Name Suit

[memphisskin]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

This whole issue is PC at its worst. I don't believe for one second the owners who created these team names intended ANY racism. Plus if 90% of the folks who are perceived by some to be offended, aren't, it's a non-issue.

Won't go into Vikings, but they are no longer around. American Indians still do, well at least 3 million of them do.

I can believe that the majority of Redskins fans do not intend any racism when mentioning the team. I don't think any of us have any racist intentions when we buy Redskins gear, or even come into The Warpath and type what we feel about the Redskins. But I also don't think any one of us started liking the Washington Redskins because it was a way to celebrate the American Indian, or 90% of us sure didn't.

I won't belabor this, but that survey really only speaks to the 90% of people they surveyed, it cannot and should not be used to extrapolate to the greater population. So 90% of the people the University of Pennsylvania surveyed in 2003 did not find the term Redskin offensive. Without seeing their methodology their are two major problems with this reasoning. 1) Not every American Indian had an equal chance of being chosen to participate in this survey, so the survey results only apply to the survey participants which in this case is 768 people. 2) I haven't seen their methodology but how the question was asked in large part dictates the answer. By the information given in the article there is no way to tell if they were asked to rank certain words, or to give their response to certain words, or how the question was framed. So to use this survey as proof is at the least spurious and possibly disingenous.

I saw that George Preston Marshall named the team after his coach. So in 1933, George Marshall was so enamored with his American Indian coach that he nicknamed his team the Redskins to celebrate the coaches ancestry? In 1933? In Boston in 1933? And that's a fact? I guess King Kong was just about a giant gorilla wreaking havoc on New York too, huh? And Tarzan was just a story about a guy raised by apes who somehow became King of the Jungle? Dude if you piss in my water and call it lemonade it doesn't make it so, its still piss.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by memphisskin

Won't go into Vikings, but they are no longer around. American Indians still do, well at least 3 million of them do.

There are plenty of people with Nordic ancestry around, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and many other. I've never heard one complaint of being offended by the Viking name. Plenty of Irish around, and the "Fighting Irish" has often been mentioned as a veiled reference to the "drunk Irishman" sterotype. No Irish are compaining about ND. Those were just a couple that came to mind quickly. There are other many other team names/mascots people could find offensive.

I saw that George Preston Marshall named the team after his coach. So in 1933, George Marshall was so enamored with his American Indian coach that he nicknamed his team the Redskins to celebrate the coaches ancestry? In 1933? In Boston in 1933? And that's a fact?

Actually some more background so you don't think I'm "pissing in your water". The Boston Braves came from the old Duluth Eskimos, who were bankrupt (I guess that team name was offensive too). Marshall wanted to distinguish his team from the Boston Braves baseball team, but keep with the same Indian theme. This was also an honor to his new coach William "Lone Star" Dietz, a full blooded Indian who played with Jim Thorpe at Carlisle. The team moved from Braves Field to Fenway Park and changed the name to Redskins.

For the record, my wife has Indian ancestry in her background and has no problem with the team name, should we include her in the survey too?

[memphisskin]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

Actually some more background so you don't think I'm "pissing in your water". The Boston Braves came from the old Duluth Eskimos, who were bankrupt (I guess that team name was offensive too). Marshall wanted to distinguish his team from the Boston Braves baseball team, but keep with the same Indian theme. This was also an honor to his new coach William "Lone Star" Dietz, a full blooded Indian who played with Jim Thorpe at Carlisle. The team moved
from Braves Field to Fenway Park and changed the name to Redskins.

For the record, my wife has Indian ancestry in her background and has no problem with the team name, should we include her in the survey too?

Wait, so you're telling me a man identified as "the leading racist in the NFL for 24 years" (courtesy of his wikipedia page) and one who only drafted a black man upon pressure from the federal government, chose a pejorative name for the team as a way to "honor" his coach? That is piss, not lemonade sir, and I shall not drink it!

Won't get into the argument about other team nicknames as it is irrelevant.

[Skinsfan1967]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

There are plenty of people with Nordic ancestry around, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and many other. I've never heard one complaint of being offended by the Viking name. Plenty of Irish around, and the "Fighting Irish" has often been mentioned as a veiled reference to the "drunk Irishman" sterotype. No Irish are compaining about ND. Those were just a couple that came to mind quickly. There are other many other team names/mascots people could find offensive.


Actually some more background so you don't think I'm "pissing in your water". The Boston Braves came from the old Duluth Eskimos, who were bankrupt (I guess that team name was offensive too). Marshall wanted to distinguish his team from the Boston Braves baseball team, but keep with the same Indian theme. This was also an honor to his new coach William "Lone Star" Dietz, a full blooded Indian who played with Jim Thorpe at Carlisle. The team moved from Braves Field to Fenway Park and changed the name to Redskins.

For the record, my wife has Indian ancestry in her background and has no problem with the team name, should we include her in the survey too?

The nickname for the team in Carlisle was, by no coincidence, the Indians.