Now It's Your Turn, Redskins Owner
Like the Cleveland Indians or Atlanta Braves, Indian-related team names hark back to earlier cultural times in America. But that doesn't excuse the continued use of Redskins, an indisputably vulgar racial slur. It only shows how some people win respect in the world of pro sports more easily than others do.
That's the question at heart in the new name dispute. Who gets respect?
African-Americans and our allies can celebrate the swift, strong and decisive response by the NBA to Sterling's comments that were leaked to the TMZ celebrity news site. It was strange indeed to hear Sterling, an NBA team owner, telling his mixed-race girlfriend to avoid being seen in public with "black people" in this day and age. But it would have been even weirder for the predominantly black NBA to respond with anything less than full respect for its black players after Sterlings' insults.
The same would be true in the NFL, I am certain, if an owner wanted to call his team, say, the "Newark Negroes." The league would be loony to risk the walkout, not only by players, but also by fans that undoubtedly would follow.
Yet that, in effect, is the signal that the Washington Redskins name sends to this country's Native People with its name. The irony is in the lame defense offered by Snyder and others who insist they actually are paying tribute to Native Americans. There is no lower insult to any group than to insist that you know better than they do as to when and why they should feel insulted -- or not.
If the NFL was two-thirds Native American instead of two-thirds black, we wouldn't be having the same conversation. But it is a sad, cynical reality of today's racial etiquette that respect goes to those who have not just sympathies but numbers, money, votes or some other leverage with which to wield real power.
Still, I am optimistic that "Redskins" and similar vulgarities are on their way out. It is only a matter of how long public attitudes and generational viewpoints change to where even Snyder's players, fans or fellow NFL owners think it's time to give this R-word a rest.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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