I'm not sure how to feel on this one. I doubt my dad (an enrolled member of one of the plains tribes) will be pleased as the Redskins are his favorite NFL team.
If I was the Apache Foundation, I would be looking for another name.
If I was the Apache Foundation, I would be looking for another name.
'"Redskin" is a term for Native Americans. Its connotations are a subject of debate,[1] although the term is defined in current dictionaries of American English as "usually offensive",[2] "disparaging",[3][4] "insulting",[5] and "taboo." [6]'
Oddly enough, one of the owners of the redskins was a racist. The washington redskins were the last team to integrate and their foundation was specifically forbidden to donate money towards integration causes. However, I think their team name was picked by the original owner, who named them the Boston Braves like the baseball team (now Atlanta Braves) who wanted the team to be like the New York Giants football/baseball (now S.F. Giants), but Boston fans were confused and they changed the name.
(2) 1/3 is an arbitrary number. The threshold for materiality is only 5% generally speaking.
(3) The whole analysis is clearly an ex post facto rationalization of a pre-conceived policy outcome
(4) This is a terribly way to make law
(5) Cloaking it in "data analysis" is a joke...see 1-4.
I assume we are only after sports teams because its easy to guilt the owners. Please have Cleveland get rid of their mascot
Cleveland's name is based on reference to the nickname for Joe Louis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Browns and the original owner wanted to name it after the coach Paul Brown.
edit:
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/12/321392824/the-ad-campaign-to-t...
That isn't to say it's not offensive -- but I don't think promotion of inflammatory false information is constructive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10...
A variation of "Red-skin" also appears in the French Language (something there is no data to support Native Americans would have objected to, presumably). Again, this is neither here nor there in that french speaking canadiens would have been in contact with all manner of native americans, including those among which 'scalping' took place (in terms of geographic an time period overlap etc).
editL
Just a cut-n-paste but might be helpful for some folks to baseline:
Redskin...had not emerged first in English or any European language. The English term, in fact, derived from Native American phrases involving the color red in combination with terms for flesh, skin, and man. These phrases were part of a racial vocabulary that Indians often used to designate themselves in opposition to others whom they (like the Europeans) called black, white, and so on.
But the language into which those terms for Indians were first translated <was French>. The tribes among whom the proto forms of redskin first appeared lived in the area of the upper Mississippi River called Illinois country. Their extensive contact with French-speaking colonists, before the French pulled out of North America, led to these phrases being translated, in the 1760s, more or less literally as peau-rouge and only then into English as redskin. It bears mentioning that many such translators were mixed-blood Indians.
So the original term in the west was "peau-rouge" and this can be see in various french-language citations if needed--including news reports. How and why this was used as slang in English is another question all together, and how or why it ended up as a mascot (like braves, warriors, spartans etc) another question again.
The point of the ruling was a significant portions of Native Americans found "redskins" to be derogatory at the time the team chose the name all the way to today. I think people arguing today that "redskins" is offensive is based on the fact that a significant portion of Native Americans do think it is offensive today and not based on etymology alone.
The image really is pretty bad.
And I take a bit of an offense at you telling me or my Dad what you think Redskin means versus what he grew up with and myself growing up on a reservation with the slang "skins" being used often and not in anyway like your dictionary definition probably written by someone who had never set foot on a reservation.
They never had the website, and they can't get it back. And being the name of a group isn't the basis for the legal decision here, so that part is irrelevant, too.
> And I take a bit of an offense at you telling me or my Dad what you think Redskin means versus what he grew up with and myself growing up on a reservation with the slang "skins" being used often and not in anyway like your dictionary definition probably written by someone who had never set foot on a reservation.
The petitioners for cancellation of the trademarks in this case (and the previous one on the same marks) were all Native Americans, enrolled in tribes -- I'm not sure if anyone of them lived on reservations or not, but that's irrelevant to the legal standard anyhow. Further, the evidence presented in the case, and the legal standard, address whether the terms were disparaging to a substantial composite of the referenced group (Native Americans), not to some group irrelevant to that.
That doesn't mean that all Native Americans have to view the mark as disparaging for it to be cancelled, but it certainly does mean that the decision is not about whether other people, who aren't Native Americans, think the term is disparaging to Native Americans.
http://www.ncai.org/attachments/LegalBriefing_TByaxkdqYwYRDo...
Note that the first two listed are:
Amicus National Congress of American Indians ("NCAI") was established in 1944 and is the oldest and largest national intertribal organization; it represents over 250 tribes, nations, pueblos, and Alaska Native villages with a combined enrollment of over 1.2 million.
Amici Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Comanche Nation of Oklahoma, Oneida Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, and Seminole Nation of Oklahoma are federally recognized Indian tribes that have adopted resolutions condemning the use of Indian names and mascots by sports teams.
So, while its nice that you read the named plaintiffs, it would probably help if you read the document beyond the names of the parties to get a clear understanding of what is actually going on.
Oh, excuse me, all of those are failures of government and we cannot acknowledge that.
I mean, one of the organized groups that started protesting and lobbying against these sports uses the earliest was AIM [1], who, whatever else one might say, certainly cannot fairly be described as not interested in addressing "failures of government" affecting Native Americans.
AIM's history of involvement on this issue was among the pieces of evidence cited in the decision supporting the conclusion of fact that the marks at issue were disparaging to a substantial composite of Native Americans at the time registered.
> I'm not sure AIM is even a going concern these days after everything that the FBI did to them.
There clearly less active now than in the past, e.g., their most recent press release on their website is October 22, 2013 -- concerning the very issue here, interestingly enough.
If the Apache group of tribes claimed that the word "Apache" was offensive, and managed to convince the USPTO that that was the case, maybe they could get the trademark rescinded, but that wouldn't mean they would get it for themselves, nor would it even mean the ASF would have to stop using the name, much less give up their website, only that they would no longer be able to sue other people for using it as well.
And bear in mind that trademark law does not aim to be a unique name registry. The trademark is issued in the context of the business. For example, the USPTO has trademarks registered for Apache helicopters and Apache skateboards, among others.
Those looking to "make a statement" can probably find the next lawsuit in that arena.