Richard Sherman: Double standard exists between race, fighting in sports

Bet you wouldn't feel that way if the team was the Washington Sambos. How about a little compassion

 

Co-sign, Sherman is 100% right IMO.

 

Sambos??

If you're gonna rank racial slurs, 'redskin' doesn't carry any of the weight or baggage of the more familiar ones used against African Americans in the antebellum South.

You won't see redskins much if at all in the historical record of this country's westward expansion, and ironically it's a term used more in Hollywood movies than in actual discourse from that period.

Native Americans in the 19th century were commonly referred to by their tribal affiliation, or just called 'savages', which is a whole level deeper than redskins.

People bang on the Redskins football franchise because the original owner George Preston Marshall was an avowed racist and bigot who was the last NFL owner to integrate his team.

But to paint the entire history of the Redskins organization with the same broad racist brush as if anything Marshall touched carries the taint of racism is wrong.

Redskins as a sports name is IMO on the same level at the Cleveland Indians or the Atlanta Braves.
Offensive maybe, but to call the use of those names inherently racist is just way off base.

There are predominantly Native American HSs in the U.S. that call themselves Redskins, and there are surveys of Native Americans that show the majority of them don't find the term derogatory or offensive.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/10/08/how-many-native-americans-think-redskins-is-a-slur/
In 2004, the National Annenberg Election Survey asked 768 people who identified themselves as Indian whether they found the name “Washington Redskins” offensive. Almost 90 percent said it did not bother them.


If the word Redskin had a present history or usage that made it politically charged or divisive, I'd be in favor of changing it.

But it doesn't.

IMO it's the equivalent of honky. Sounds kinda stupid and calling someone one is even dumber.


This is a manufactured outrage from small activists groups who don't speak for the majority of Native tribal groups, or the PC police who find the word redskins racist on principle.

If the term Redskins offends Sherman but isn't offensive to 90% of Native Americans, then Sherman is full of shit to claim having an NFL franchise called the Redskins is indicative of the NFL being tolerant towards racism.

SHerman is one of the first cats to defend NFL players calling each other Nigger, but he thinks the word Redskin is out of bounds??

GTFOH.

 

So you can speak for Native Americans and what they find offensive? What tribe do you belong to chief?

 

I'm going by what every survey I've read on the subject reports, not me.

I'm a Redskins fan 4life and it will never be offensive to my ears.
I know I'm biased but I do think those folks deciding that the word is offensive to Native Americans are being paternalistic.


It's all about context.

If you say, 'those Irish sure love to fight', it's an ethnic slur.

But when it's the name of a football team, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, it's an honorific.

Mostly I have an issue with Richard Sherman.:axe:

 

Certainly there are surveys that back up your stance on this, there are also stories like below that argue very strongly against the name. As we discussed in another thread, the name "Redskins" was chosen by the most rabid of racists, the teams' first owner, that alone should be grounds to change it.

"For years, American Indians have protested the mascot name of the NFL's Washington franchise, and now a new generation has taken up the fight"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...ve-americans-washington-mascot-fight/2148877/

"She was a student at the University of Kansas in 2005 when she joined a group called Not in Our Honor that planned to protest the use of Indian nicknames outside Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium before a game between the Chiefs and the Washington team on Oct. 16 of that year.
"We assembled peacefully and we carried signs," Blackhorse says. "We carried flags for the tribes we represented, to show that we are proud people and very diverse, from many different tribes. We wanted to show that we are human beings, not mascots."

 

This country was founded by racists. If being racist were enough to disqualify people and institutions from any kind of legitimacy, I'd shoot myself in the head right now.

The Redskins have had three owners since George Preston Marshall, have had one of the most integrated teams in the NFL and were the first team to start and win a SB with a Black QB.

THe Redskins assuredly are no longer George Preston Marshall's football team.

 

Agree with some of what you said above, one thing you can't dispute is that the name "Redskins" came from the mind of Marshall, an avowed and open racist. Where we disagree is that the remnants of racism should not always be challenged, hence the mascot name change for multiple universities who used to have Native American themed mascots. Hell even Ol' Miss finally saw the light and changed their mascot from a fictional rebel plantation owner to a bear http://content.usatoday.com/communi...ole-miss-set-for-mascot-change/1#.U20op8eZMug. Plus the fact that this Redskin name case has already been argued in a court of law, and won per below, only to be overturned on a technicality shows that there is a lot of legal merit to the idea of a name change.



"The familiar arguments are fundamentally the same as in Harjo et al v. Pro-Football Inc., a trademark suit filed in 1992 that wound its way through the courts for 17 years. Suzan Shown Harjo and six petitioners won that case before the trademark board in 1999 but lost on appeal, largely on a technical argument that they had waited too long to assert their rights."