Obama is right: Redskins is a racist mascot

In the midst of a government shutdown, President Obama’s opinions about football are maybe a teeny bit less important than, say, the thousands of furloughed Americans or the threat of the United States defaulting on its debts.  

Still, when the President’s comments about the Washington Redskins from an Oct. 4 Associated Press interview hit the web, they ignited a veritable media campfire — less than a firestorm, but more than a mere spark of interest.

“If I were the owner of the team, and I knew that there was a name of my team — even if it had a storied history — that was offending a sizeable group of people, I’d think about changing it,” said Obama in the interview published Oct. 5..

The question was a non-political coda to an interview that was otherwise entirely devoted to the government shutdown, partisan stalemate and U.S. foreign and financial policy.

However, several press outlets highlighted it as if it were a key political statement.

“The sports-fan-in-chief is calling an audible,” Zeke J Miller wrote on Time.com , joining the Washington Post, Politico and the Atlantic Wire in reporting this earth-shaking revelation as a political story.

It isn’t. It’s a sports story and not an extremely relevant one. The president isn’t changing the Redskins’ name. He was asked about his position on the “is Redskins a racist name” controversy.

All Obama did was answer a question and express his opinion. That opinion may be interesting to some, but it’s not political news, and it’s probably not what we as a nation should be focusing on right now.

That being said, he’s absolutely right.

“The Redskins” is a racist name. It’s an offensive throwback to a time in which blackface and buck-toothed Asian caricatures were considered acceptable, yet somehow in 2013 it’s still okay to call Native Americans “redskins.”

In reality, calling a Native American a redskin is disrespectful and derogatory.
“Redskin” isn’t a word respectful people still use in everyday conversation unless they’re describing potatoes. That should be a red flag that the name is racist.

Imagine a professional football team called “the Chinamen.”

Or “the Negroes.”

I suspect people would call foul over a name like “the Honkies” or “the Washington Ragheads.”

If those names seem offensive, why is a name like “the Redskins” still around? Is it, as the Redskins’ lawyer Lanny J. Davis said in a statement responding to the Obama interview, because the 81-year-old name is steeped in “history and legacy and tradition?”

Probably, but that doesn’t make it okay.

After all, slavery had a lot more than 81 years of history, legacy and tradition behind it.

It may be more important to focus on Washington politics than Washington football in such a tumultuous time for the country, but the President is absolutely right about the Redskins.

The players and fans probably aren’t racist, but the team name certainly is.    
­
— kkusisto@indiana.edu