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Respectfully, we'll call that team 'Washington' (Rampant PC in Lincoln, NE)
Lincoln Journal Star ^ | 1/26/03 | Kathleen Rutledge

Posted on 01/28/2003 12:56:17 PM PST by Right Wing Professor

Readers of the sports pages may notice a change in the newspaper's style beginning today: We have stopped using the nickname "Redskins" to refer to the professional football team of the nation's capital. When we're reporting on that team, we'll call it Washington.

We also have stopped printing logos for professional and college sports teams that use Native symbols -- ones that adopt imagery such as an arrowhead and ones that caricature Native culture. The Chief Wahoo logo of the Cleveland Indians, which we stopped using last summer, is an example of rank caricature. Instead, we'll use alternative logos that stay away from Native symbols.

Finally, we've decided to drop the stereotypical modifier "Fighting" when used with team nicknames such as Fighting Sioux or Fighting Illini.

We've made this decision out of respect for Native people. Plain and simple.

We will no longer use "Redskins" or "Skins" because it is a racial slur. It derives from an old, genocidal practice in this country of scalping Indians to earn a bounty. A bounty hunter could prove he had killed an Indian by turning in a scalp. The bloody scalps were called "redskins." I learned this from the Portland Press Herald in Maine, which banned "Redskins" from its sports pages in July 2000.

What about Native people who proudly wear "Redskins" caps and shirts? That's their choice, just as it is the choice of other sports fans to emblazon the name across their chests, some in the professed belief that it honors Native people.

I choose to credit the words of a Lakota man who recalled that he wore a "Redskins" T-shirt as a boy. He thought it was cool. When he was older, when he heard fans "woo-wooing," he saw things differently. "I felt like a cardboard cutout, a cartoon,'' he said.

Last year, the Native American Journalists Association called on news organizations to stop using sports mascots and nicknames that depict Native Americans by 2004.

I asked Sports Editor John Mabry and News Editor Jim Johnson, a NAJA member, to lead our inquiry on this topic. They researched the question, put together a packet of materials that included readers' views, and arranged for newsroom staffers to get together to talk it over. The two made a recommendation and I have accepted it.

Many sports mascots were adopted at a time in this country when Native people had no voice. Now they have a voice.

Some newspapers have already heeded that voice. The Minneapolis Star Tribune banned the use of all Native team names and mascots in 1994. The Oregonian, the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, the Portland Press Herald and the Kansas City Star limit publication of Native mascots and images in varying ways.

Today, the Lincoln Journal Star joins their ranks. Out of respect for Native people. Pure and simple.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; US: District of Columbia; US: Maryland; US: Nebraska; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: nativeamericans; pc; redskins
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To: Guillermo
And, they spend the other half of their time trying to convince the people in question (in this case Native Americans) that they should be upset.
21 posted on 01/28/2003 1:28:09 PM PST by SoDak
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To: dirtboy
Oh, so many great taglines, so few that wouldn't get me suspended. Suffice it to say that if you like the name, just wait until you see the helmets.
22 posted on 01/28/2003 1:29:53 PM PST by RichInOC (...and I assume the team mascot will be Zot the anteater.)
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To: Right Wing Professor
When we're reporting on that team, we'll call it Washington.

What, and honor a rich, old, white, warmongering slaveholder who got himself "selected" President by undemocratic means? You gotta be kidding me!

23 posted on 01/28/2003 1:31:25 PM PST by Argus
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To: dighton
dollars to doughnuts none of them have ever played sports and, thus, have never rallied together under one of the "offensive" monikers.
24 posted on 01/28/2003 1:33:40 PM PST by Semaphore Heathcliffe
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To: RonF
First, their uncritical acceptance of the entymology of "redskins", without checking primary sources themselves, is suspect.

Agreed. The OED lists the first use of 'redskin' in 1699. While scalping went on before that - after all, the Indians themselves invented it - the first bounty, as far as I know, wasn't offered in English America until 1703, and the practice really didn't take off (so to speak) until the French and Indian War. The guy who first proposed the 'scalp' theory dates the word to 1800, which is way too late.

25 posted on 01/28/2003 1:34:35 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Argus
Well, considering that the University of Nebraska's teams are the "Cornhuskers," I can think of several alternative spellings of their team name. I'll leave it to your imaginations.
26 posted on 01/28/2003 1:34:51 PM PST by MineralMan
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To: RichInOC
Helmets....fo(u)rskins...a team that can rise to the occasion....stiff competition....hard to beat....swelling with team pride....

somebody else can take it from there.

27 posted on 01/28/2003 1:35:15 PM PST by clintonh8r (It's better to be feared than to be respected.)
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To: dirtboy
call the team the fourskins

LOL, but you left out the gays, and that's homophobic and insensitive.

I don't even want to think about what that would do to Green Bay's team name.

28 posted on 01/28/2003 1:35:44 PM PST by Argus
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To: Guillermo
Vikings, Packers Cowboys...

Surely these must be insults to Nordic Peoples, meat processing industry workers, and Americans of every extraction who found themselves in the American Old West. My wife's family hails from Vik Norway, from whence the Vikings get their name, several relatives have worked in the meat packing industry and I've got a Cowboy hat, boots and buckle, so I guess I should be triply offended? NOT!

29 posted on 01/28/2003 1:37:03 PM PST by El Gato
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To: Argus
A pcture is worth a thousand words..

30 posted on 01/28/2003 1:42:26 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: clintonh8r
> "Craig Kilbourn had a great comment about the post-game riots last night: After the game fans rioted in Oakland, setting fires, breaking windows and damaging buildings, causing over a million dollars in improvements."

I heard that one...and it was good. One correction for him and you... they weren't "fans." In fact, I'll bet most didn't watch the game other than to see when it was over so they could start rioting. They are the thugs, muggers and slime that cause trouble in any situation and only saw this event as a great excuse for mayhem and looting.

Other than that... spot on.
31 posted on 01/28/2003 1:44:49 PM PST by pgyanke (Yes, I'm depressed about the Raiders... thank you for asking...)
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To: Right Wing Professor
When we're reporting on that team, we'll call it Washington.

That's great. And we Washingtonians will continue to call you "place where airplanes dump their chemical toilets."

32 posted on 01/28/2003 1:45:09 PM PST by monkey
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To: Junior
What is even better about the Washington Redskins is that you can get their shirts and stuff a lot cheaper than other teams, since they lost the trademark protection for their name.
33 posted on 01/28/2003 1:45:18 PM PST by berserker
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To: Right Wing Professor
The one team you never hear any complaints about is Florida State - they pay the Seminole nation for the right to use their name. As El Rushbo always says, follow the bucks!
34 posted on 01/28/2003 1:47:26 PM PST by GodBlessRonaldReagan (where is Scotty Moore when we need him most?)
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To: Right Wing Professor
Readers of this PC rag should be on the lookout for such racist expressions as "a chink in his armor"; "don't put that gook in your hair" and recipes with "sauerkraut."
35 posted on 01/28/2003 1:49:56 PM PST by JimVT
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To: pgyanke
My Dad's high school teams, he made all city in BB, were known as the Havelock "Engineers", the kind that blew the whisle on the train! In those days I doubt there was an aboriginal American in the bunch, or at least darn few of them. Lots of Swedes though, at least on the Burlington. That was in the same city whose "Urinal and Star" now thinks that team names are chosen to "dis" some group or other. The school no longer exists, having been consolidated into Lincoln Northeast. I suppose they think that Lincol East's "Spartans" is offensive to those of Greek heritage?
36 posted on 01/28/2003 1:52:56 PM PST by El Gato
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To: Junior
This clown obviously does not know anything about that which he speaks.

Not only that, but the clown in question obviously isn't fit to be editor of a major paper, because she didn't verify this information with a second source, which in better days was a requirement for sound journalism.

37 posted on 01/28/2003 1:54:36 PM PST by dirtboy
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To: dighton; general_re; Poohbah; hellinahandcart; BlueLancer
As long as we're on the subject:

"An Indian ... seized Henderson's daughter, 'sweet and pretty child of two, and beat her savagely over the head with a violin case, smashing her head horribly out of shape. Then he took her by her feet and dashed her brains out against the wheel of the wagon, spattering her mother with blood and brains. Another fiend took the nine-months-old boy, hacked off his limbs with a tomahawk, and threw pieces at the mother. Then they made a big fire and tossed featherbed, woman, and mangled children into the flames."

The Great Sioux Uprising, C.M. Oehler, Da Capo Press, 1997.

38 posted on 01/28/2003 1:56:08 PM PST by aculeus (Big Chief Webmaster didn't like me posting this at Looseyanne.com.)
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To: El Gato
I suppose they think that Lincol East's "Spartans" is offensive to those of Greek heritage?

My kids all went to East. At least it's better than the Trojans. Too many jokes about the Trojan protection breaking down, busting through the Trojan defense...definitely offensive to Americans who practice safe sex.

39 posted on 01/28/2003 1:58:35 PM PST by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor
Reminds me of an old joke news article from about the time that Washington's basketball team changed it's name.

WASHINGTON D.C. The Washington Bullets basketball team has announced that they are going to change their name because their image has become associated with urban violence. Henceforth they will be known simply as "The Bullets".

40 posted on 01/28/2003 1:58:42 PM PST by gridlock (Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue)
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