Mike Wise won't say "Redskins"?

Yeah, leaving out a basic fact makes one a good writer. : And yes, it is a snit and a grandstand. And you tossed away a lot of your cred when you compared this situation to Jackie Robinson. In Robinson's time, blacks were regularly called the N word and a lot of other bad things. I don't see a lot of people calling Native Americans a bunch of redskins.

 

Unless his nickname is n------, I don't think that analogy holds.

 

Ah, Dooley, it'd be easy to say you're making the point of Wise and others for him -- there aren't a lot of people out there calling Native Americans "redskins" because -- it's a SLUR!

 

No, the point is, it's a quaint vestige that doesn't serve as a club in a bigot's bag anymore. You damn well know, intuitively, that's it not anywhere near the same as calling the team the Washington N-----s. If the team were called that, Wise would be writing every column about trying to change that. The difference in severity is clear in that Wise is merely avoiding the word, not crusading about it constantly.

Kornheiser uses the term "Redskins." Is he a bigot?

 

Then you've never been to a state where white people and Native Americans are asked to live in harmony together. They get called much worse, in fact. Ask sportschick how people talk about Native Americans in Montana, in, say, Columbia Falls for instance, when they're not around. Ask some of our posters from North Dakota, Eastern Washington, upstate New York, central Oklahoma, or the panhandle of Florida. I know plenty of people who used, and still use, the term Spearchuckers. There is a huge amount of racism toward Native Americans still, but most people are either ignorant to it, or just don't give a damn.

 

I don't use the term Indians or Braves where a local school which doesn't have any Indian input in the name. It is a backward thing like Hollywood movies where "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" was the sort of mentality and lie sold to American culture.

The Fighting Irish is different, because even though French priests used a French name to found Notre Dame in the 19th century, the players who made Notre Dame successful on the way up were largely Irish and the team's success was a point of pride and the fact that the Irish would keep fighting and never give up - it was Irish immigrants and sons of immigrants who made that the nickname. Yeah, I know Knute Rockne was Norwegian and Protestant but there were still a lot of Irish and it is part of the school's heritage, tradition, and lore.

And even though my mother is Irish, I still take schenfraude when Notre Dame loses. I always get a kick out of it.

 

Dooley, this has nothing to do with whether it's Mike Wise or Joe Blow. I'm just saying I have no problem with Wise's choice, journalistically or otherwise. He's uncomfortable with a term that is considered by many to be offensive, so he's going to avoid using it. I don't see how that hurts anyone.

As far as there being other measures he could take that would be of greater benefit to Native Americans, of course there are. Maybe he's doing other things, maybe he's not. I don't know and it's really none of my business. All I can judge is what he's doing within the confines of his column, and rather than just go along with something he finds objectionable, he's taking a small personal stand against it. That's more than any other Washington columnist I know of is doing. 21 is right that readers will probably stop even noticing the absence of Redskins in his columns, but sometimes you just do what you think is right, whether anyone notices or not.

 

A big part of the problem here is that there's no single Native-American social or political body to mount a united defense against this sort of institutional(ized) racism. Part of that is cultural - the scores and scores of various tribes are self-governing, and have never been able to build any sort of central alliance for the political betterment of the American Indian. Part of it is the systematic repression on the part of our government against them ever being able to do so.

More to the point, unlike African-Americans, whom we merely abducted and sold into slavery, the native population we decimated and killed. Compared even to the African-American population in this country, the number of American Indians is tiny. There just aren't enough left to plead their own case.

Drive out to Pine Ridge, Dools, and see what sort of reception the word "redskin" gets you. I'm sure if you make the argument that it's a slur in service of an important NFL franchise, they'll go easy on you.

 

Have to side with Dooley and Shottie on this one. This stilted device calls more attention to Wise himself than to the political incorrectness of the nickname.

And the absurdity of writing 'Washington' over and over is that most sportswriters/sports sections very rarely use the city name of the franchise in copy and headlines, assuming that the reader knows what city he/she lives in/around, as well as to avoid confusion with other franchises in/around the city. If the Wizards signed a free agent on a Sunday in which the Redskins and Nats both played, do you think all three headlines in the Washington Post would reference 'Washington' or 'Wash'? I tend to doubt it. In fact, none of them would.

 

Mr. Wise wrote a column alerting readers to what he was doing and why. Clearly the strategy's been effective, at least insofar as he's got other members of the press, us, arguing about it. By increasing our awareness of the issue, we're more likely to write about it, even if only to condemn him for doing it. If his intention is to broaden the community conversation about this, he's already succeeding.

Honest question pursuant to an adjacent thread: How come when Mr. Simers writes some flyweight bullshit about who's popular or not in the Dodger's clubhouse, he's creating "buzz", and a credit to newspapering; but when Mr. Wise does something like this to increase awareness of what many consider an actual matter of social injustice, it's considered solipsistic navel-gazing?

 

Haven't weighed in on that thread, but I can tell you I'm on spnited's side on that one at all times. While he's obviously talented, I find Simers to be a self-serving, self-important douchebag who writes WAY too much about himself.

 

First off, don't get me started on Simers. He ain't on my Christmas card list. And we're arguing on this relatively small forum about its journalistic merits of it and whether the stand is truly noble. I doubt the plight of Native Americans is truly part of the consideration. And I doubt that in Washington, people are around the water cooler debating the merits of the team name.