To me, a redskin is what I use in potato salad, but from the controversy about the name of Washington state’s football team, you would think all we Americans ever do is battle over words. It doesn’t seem as if the term has the same derogatory connotation as some we’ve encountered over the years. If the team had been called, say, the Washington Savages or the Seattle Scalp-Takers, maybe there would be cause for an uproar (or dare we say the formation of a war party?), and we would be trying to think of some vanilla name for a group of men smashing each other around for possession of funny-shaped spheres of brown bumpy inflated bladders. As it is, the Atlanta Braves or Cleveland Indians don’t get the same level of controversy (at least not before now), because “brave” is apparently okay (denotes courage), and apparently it isn’t confusing to try to distinguish native Indians from people from Mumbai, but referring to one having the distinctive red flesh of our noble indigenous tribes is not proper.
Being from Philadelphia, we have the Eagles (a noble bird and a national emblem–the bald one, anyway–to denote positive animal role models) and the Phillies. That was a no-brainer, because we could have gone with Quakers, but the University of Pennsylvania already had that one taken, and the Philadelphia Hoagies just sounds dumb. I guess we could have been the Bells or the Independents or something, but there you have it. The baseball team is from Philly, we say it two different ways and mean it. As for football, I sing “Fly, Eagles, Fly” with the best of them, and as long as nobody gets hurt by a beak or talon, we’re okay with it.
For generations we have shortchanged the native people of this land, and I think we should show respect when we name anything for them. The emblem for Washington is fine the way it is, too. We have bigger problems in this country than mincing words over one word. Let’s just let the Washington Redskins play football with the name they have, let the Atlanta Braves play baseball, and we can all just enjoy the sports they so nobly represent. Now kindly pass the potato salad (skins on).
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