Introduction
The Washington R*dskins are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area (headquarters in Virginia). The team competes in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) East division.
Native American individuals, tribes, and organizations have been questioning the use of the name and image of the team for decades and it has been part of a larger controversy. Already in the 1940s the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) created a campaign that aimed at eliminating negative stereotyping of Native American people in the media. Over time, the campaign began to focus on Indian names and mascots in sports.
The question is not a simple one—it has many different aspects, including the historical construction of Indian identity, the persistence of stereotypes, deep societal divisions over race, the relationship between “free speech” and “hate speech,” and the legal protection of registered trademarks.
Reasons for the controversy
The Washington team name, logo, and mascot represent the Native Americans in a deeply negative way and recreate societal divisions and prejudices. Indeed, the name is a dictionary defined racial slur. According to the NCAI, teams with mascots such as the R*dskins and the Braves perpetuate negative stereotypes of Native American people, and demean Native traditions and rituals.
In 2013, the NCAI issued a new report summarizing opposition to Indian mascots and team names generally, and the Washington R*dskins in particular. However, the name and logo of the Cleveland Indians baseball team has received criticism as well.
The Washington team was born in an era when racism and bigotry were accepted by the dominant culture, and the founder of the team, George Preston Marshall, was an infamous segregationists who openly supported the ban of African American players in the NFL. He was the very last team owner to permit an African American player on his team, but he did so only under the threat of sanctions by the federal government. Marshall’s racist beliefs drew support from the American Nazi Party, and he even went so far as to stipulate in his last will and testament that his foundation would not distribute any resources to schools or programs that promoted the intermingling of children from different races.
Nonetheless, “Indian” sports brands such as the R*dskins have grown to become multi-million dollar franchises and the name controversy also raises the question of legal protection of trademarks (and whether the team name presents hate speech or racist commentary and therefore should be a registered trademark for that matter).
According to the NCAI, the “Indian” sports mascots, logos, and symbols promote harm and intolerance and have very real consequences for Native people. Rather than honoring Native peoples, the caricatures and stereotypes that are represented by the logos are harmful and perpetuate negative stereotypes of America’s first peoples. According to NCAI, this contributes to a disregard for the personhood of Native peoples. The NCAI states that derogatory “Indian” sports mascots have serious psychological, social and cultural consequences for Native Americans, especially Native youth, who face a higher risk of hate crimes than other groups in the society.
The dispute is deeply important to many Native American groups, who have sought for decades to revoke federal protection of the “R*dskins” trademark and to force the team to change the name altogether. In 2014, the U.S. Patent Office ruled that the R-word is “disparaging to Native Americans” and therefore not entitled to taxpayer-financed copyright protections. In 2013, even president Obama urged the team to change its name. The name has been criticized by a prominent NFL player Champ Bailey as being a similar insult to the Native Americans as the N-word is to African Americans.
Nevertheless, nothing in federal law prevents Pro-Football Inc. or the teams from continuing to use the offensive names. The Patent and Trademark Office rejected the application to trademark the name because it is “immoral, deceptive or scandalous” — only to see the appeals court state that the part of the 1946 Lanham Act, which regulates trademarks, violates the First Amendment’s protections of free speech. The R*dskins asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and the court stated that “rejecting trademarks that disparage others violates the First Amendment.”
Conclusion
Even though the topic has been on the agenda of the NCAI for decades, it has become prominent in the wider discussion only in the recent years. Even though late, it is about time it is discussed by the politicians and the court system and not just activists alone. The continued use of this language invokes stereotypes that reproduce and strengthen societal divisions.
In May 2017, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said it well while drawing national praise for removing a set of Confederate monuments from his city. In his speech justifying the move Landrieu said: “History cannot be changed (and) cannot be moved like a statue,” but getting rid of those monuments was one way to try to begin a healing process.