Respectfully, we'll call that team 'Washington' (Rampant PC in Lincoln, NE)

Lincoln Journal Star ^ | 1/26/03 | Kathleen Rutledge

[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.

[newgeezer]

I wish I had a link to the poll that showed over 80% of "native Americans" did not find the names/mascots offensive.

I'll never forget the full-page ad I saw in USA Today a few years ago. It was placed by a group of Indians asking voters to support some legislation important to operators of Indian casinos. The interesting thing was that nowhere was there any mention of "native Americans"! In it, the group consistently referred to themselves as Indians or American Indians. One might think the "Native American" term was dreamed up by a bunch of leftist, guilt-ridden, P.C. hacks.

I wish I'd kept it.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I am personally offended when I hear about the "SOONERS", after all these were a bunch of
cheating whiteys! /sarcasm>

Well, when they had the land rush did your ancestors wait for the starting gun(Boomers) or sneak in ahead of time(Sooners)to claim their land?

[Phantom Lord]

What will they refer to the Syracuse Orangemen as?

[jiggyboy]

George Carlin says that "The Fighting Irish" is about as sterotypical is it gets. "Why not 'The Bargaining Jews'?"

[Semaphore Heathcliffe]

now THAT is how invader should be handled.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

I've got a solution. Let's come up with name that reflects the four major ethic groups in this country: white, black, hispanic and native American, and call the team the fourskins...

OK a$$hole where do I send the bill for the new keyboard? Damn Diet Coke is EVERYWHERE!!! ;-)

[SerfsUp]

From George Orwell's "Principles of Newspeak", an appendix to 1984:

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought...should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever."

[jiggyboy]

I have had to stop stocking Cheez Nips in the company kitchen and Spic 'n' Span in the bathrooms due to complaints from the cleaning staff.





Nah, just fooling around...but sometime, somewhere, that will happen...

[SerfsUp]

LMAO!

"Yes, does your store carry Hispanic-American 'n' Span?"

[JimRed]

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

Somehow I just can't visualize a team called the "Sissyboys".

[Xenalyte]

I can tell you that the local seahawks are getting pretty PO'ed about having the Seattle football team named after them. Too embarrassing.

They can't be nearly as embarrassed as the poor geoducks are.

[AnnaZ]

Put this one under "articles that should be from satirewire.com".

[Feiny]

Since I am from the DC area, this seems even more ridiculous. First, they went after the Bullets and now the Redskins...is nothing sacred?

[WOSG]

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." The Indians were called "Redskins" because of their red skin. Another sobriquet was "red man." This clown obviously does not know anything about that which he speaks.

I think they have been indoctrinated into PC anti_white-male cr*p and/or are engaging in deliberate lying. It takes a room temp IQ to buy that lie hook line and sinker ... and it is quite an ironic lie since of course scalping was a practise used by some Indians on white settlers/soldiers. vz. French and Indian wars, etc.

[atomic conspiracy]

"From George Orwell's "Principles of Newspeak", an appendix to 1984: "The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible."

Precisely. It just happens that I am an American Indian, er, Native American (heap smart Ivy League Injun, too). The Great Multi-Cult Mascot Inquisition is, itself, exploitative, condescending, and racist in ways that even the most offensive slurs could not be. It is a prime example of self-appointed outsiders attempting to define an entire ethnic group's views, attitudes, values and roles in society. Our role, as a defined grievance group, is to serve as a tripwire in the linguistic minefield of multi-cult power-seeking. The power relationships they seek are inherent in their choice of language and "sensitivity" is the mailed fist* with which they enforce those choices on others.

Multi-Cultural "sensitivity" is the Trojan Horse** of totalitarian thought control. I am glad that the Washington Redskins have stuck to their guns (so to speak), and refused to surrender to Multi-Cult linguistic terrorism and fantasy etymology. There is a lot more at stake than the name of a sports team.

*Admirers of traditional European warrior culture may be offended. Too bad.

** Greco-Americans may be offended. Get a life.

[perfect stranger]

You need one of these---

[drjoe]

The actual site informs us: 1. A North American Indian. (Not the preferred term.) 1699 S. Smith in H. E. Smith Colonial Days (1900) 49 Ye firste Meetinge House was solid mayde to withstande ye wicked onsaults of ye Red Skins. 1823 E. James Longs Exped. I. 160 The whites will not harm the red-skins when they have them thus in their power. 1851 Dixon W. Penn xxiii. (1872) 205 A strong believer in the native virtues of the Redskins, when these savages were treated well. 1890 Times 27 Dec. 3/2 After dark the whole band..renewed the attack, Kicking Bear himself leading the redskins. attrib. 1699 S. Smith in H. E. Smith Colonial Days (1900) 49 My Honoured Father was as Active as ye Red?¡skin Men and sinewy. 1871 Lubbock in Jrnl. Anthrop. Inst. (1872) I. 3 Though the Redskin family is constituted in a manner very unlike ours [etc.]. 1883 Athenum 20 Jan. 81/1 A picture of redskin life.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

You need one of these---

My sons college roommate has one and I saw it last Saturday, it's great.

[perfect stranger]

It will pay for itself, at $39.95