The Washington Redskins, need to rename their football team. Redskin is a racial slur akin to a group of people’s color, just as ‘negro’ is to black people. So why is this word still used as a name for a football team depicting a Native American as it’s mascot? Now I understand people may say the name comes from a place of respect for Native Americans, but since when has a white man referring to another racial group by their tone of skin color not been racist. ‘Redskin’ is not a word of honor and respect, it is a term used to objectify and separate a group of people from the masses for racial and exploitive reasons. At its heart the term ‘Redskin” is racist and represents a part of America’s past that needs to be left behind. But, not only is this term derogatory in nature it effects the ability of the Washington football team to pull in revenue, which is its main purpose.  For these reasons the Washington Redskins need to change their name because this term and others like it don’t belong on a sports team, they belong in America’s past where we should leave it for dead. 

To understand why this name is still around the origin of the name must be investigated. ‘Redskin’ was first used in 1769 when a “British lieutenant colonel translates a letter from an Indian chief promising safe passage if the officer visited his tribe in the Upper Mississippi Valley.” (Shapira) This term was further used throughout America’s past and was not racially charged until the early to late 1900’s. This racism started when land hungry Americans began looking for ways to move Native Americans off their own land. The mood of this period toward Native Americans is best shown in two instances. The first coming from Thomas Jefferson who in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Dearborn said “There is perhaps no method more irresistible of obtaining lands from them than by letting them get in debt, which when too heavy to be paid, they are always willing to lop off by a cession of land.” (Ojibwa) This view of hoping to remove Native Americans off lands they owned by unethical practices like this led to a resentment between Native Americans and white Americans. This racism came to fruition in 1863 when a Minnesotan newspaper advertised that the state reward for a dead Indian “has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth.” (Shapira) This statement and others like it that use the term redskin as the scalping of Native Americans are where many people find the racist intent. This being that the term had transitioned from another way to describe Native Americans to describing the brutal scalping of Native Americans. In no way is this word endearing toward Native Americans, in fact this word is used as little more than the description of Native American skins being sold for money just as deer hide may be sold or traded for money. This term is later defined as “often contemptuous” by Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary in 1898. At this point the term Redskin has no endearing meaning for Native Americans and is in fact used as a reminder of the brutal oppression Native Americans faced as they may be scalped for little more than the color of their skin. 

Depending on the source whether from the Washington Redskins team who say they named the team “out of respect for Native American heritage and tradition” (Leiby) or opponents of this claim who say this was not the case as an 81 year old Hartford Connecticut article shows with the Washington owner at the time stating that quote “The fact that we have in our coach lone star Dietz, an Indian, together with several Indian players has not, as may be suspected, inspired me to choose the name Redskin.” (Waldron). The name stems from the Hall of Fame Washington coach ‘lone star’ Dietz being a Native American. Dietz who was born on August 17, 1884 was the child of German American immigrants, his father being a sheriff and his mother a stay at home wife. Dietz’s fascination with Native Americans first came at the arrival of the buffalo bill show to his small town of Rice Lake Wisconsin the summer after Dietz’s senior year of high school. Dietz dressed up for the show in a Native American costume and was reported by many of his neighbors as looking “very much an Indian” (Waggoner). This incident with the Buffalo Bill show started Dietz’s fascination with Native American culture and would lead to his later problems with the federal government.

Dietz’s problems started when he worked as an artist for a government Indian school art exhibit in 1904. This is where Dietz first ran into the story of the former military man James ‘One Star’ who vanished after being dishonorably discharged from the military. Dietz decided to take over ‘One Star’s’ life and went all out with this story and even began writing letters to ‘One Star’s’ sister Sallie Eaglehorse in 1912. Many of these letters as viewed by Historian Linda Waggoner “were so phony and full of verifiable lies, not to mention expressed in the kind of 'Indian talk' you'd hear on a bad Western." (Barr) In his trial Dietz was quoted as saying that while he played football in college his teammates “teased him for looking Indian” (Waggoner) If Dietz was a Native American as he claimed this teasing would not bother him as he would in fact be a Native America. The false narrative Dietz played out is best expressed in his claim to being Native American he told to Literary Digest 

“Forty years ago a young German, a civil engineer, was a member of a party of surveyors laying out the line of a railroad over the plains. The party was attacked by Red Cloud and its camp was besieged. Day by day the supply of provi-sions grew less. Finally, the young German determined on a course so bold that none of his compan-ions dared accompany him. Alone, without arms, and with a few days’ rations, the engineer set out toward the Indian camp. He was captured and taken before the chief. While his captors introduced him with mutterings he stept forward with outstretched hand toward the chief. His plan worked. The chief met his captive with the trust that the civil engineer displayed. A lodge was assigned to the white man and he took an Indian woman as his wife. Although United States troops put an end to the Indian uprising and rescued the other engineers of the party, the young German remained with Chief Red Cloud’s tribe and his Indian wife gave birth to two children. The second child, a boy, was named Wicarhpi Isnala, or Lone Star. After he had grown wealthy as a trader and agent between the Indians and the whites the engineer left the tribe and returned to his home in the East. Here he found an old sweetheart, whom he married. After ﬁve years he returned to the Indians and took away from the tribe his son, Lone Star, who, a boy of eight years, entered a school in the East, overcame the handicaps of strange language, and was graduated from a high school at eighteen.” (Waggoner)

This story that Dietz prepared has many holes in it just like Dietz’s character. First and foremost, the story reads like something out of a western movie that was popular at the time. One of these being the primary source of Dietz’s knowledge of Native American stereotypes he so clearly illustrated in this story. The second hole appears in the dates of the story, Dietz was born in 1884 and Sallie Eaglehorse was born in 1864 this story would have started in the 1870’s Dietz’s father would have been 10 when this story happened and as we all know ten-year old’s do not have children nor do they work as civil engineers. Not to mention Dietz’s father, who was a sheriff, never did work as anything remotely close to a civil engineer. Dietz would carry this story with him throughout his career despite the FBI having women that were present at Dietz’s birth testify saying he was not one bit Native American. And despite the overwhelming evidence that Dietz was not Native American or respectful of Native American views current Washington football team owner Daniel Snyder still decides to believe a coach who was not at all Native American is a reason to put a slur such as the term Redskin on the highest of esteems. Not only is Dietz a liar but he is also a draft dodger as he was prosecuted in 1919 by the agency that would later become the FBI of “falsely registering as "a non-citizen Indian of the United States to avoid being drafted for World War I” (Barr). If anything, Dietz’s memory does not deserve to be held in such high esteem and as such if the term Redskin honors his memory it honors cowardice and lying, two things no one should honor.As well as the name ‘Redskin’ being morally wrong The Washington football team will also lose money and opportunities to gain money from keeping the term Redskin. For example, a bill proposed by a Washington D.C. council member will be “barring any Washington, D.C. money for a new stadium within the district on the grounds of the team name and the solid financial standing of the team.” (Oakes) The Washington team needs a new stadium and has been planning this for many years but, this bill would bar the redskins from ever moving to a prominent piece of land that would bring in a lot of revenue for the stadium. The name Redskin wouldn’t cost that much for the team to replace an estimate from the Washington post finds that it would cost the team around “several million dollars, probably under $5 million. They can do it aggressively in six months, sometimes even less. Sometimes it can take a couple years to do the transition.” (Greenburg) This cost is a drop in the bucket for a team forbes “considers the eighth most valuable franchise in all of sport and third most valuable football franchise.” (Greenburg) This rebranding wouldn’t be the first rebranding the franchise has faced over the more than 75 years of the franchise existing the Washington team has seen many of its symbols and logo images changed. The team fight song has even been changed because it referenced scalping people to victory. If the Washington team were to rebrand they could definitely afford it. 

With the Washington team name change the team wouldn’t find it needs to spend any more money to have the name change go through. With the salary cap as the Forbes editor Michael Oznanian says “Revenues will be the same and profitability will be the same because of the salary cap. It is an opportunity to move forward with a brand that has a positive connotation.” (Greenburg) This embracing of a new mascot will open up the team to many new supporters who would have before been turned off to the idea of supporting a team with a racial slur for its mascot name. This rebranding would make many new and old fans be forced to buy new team sportswear and bring in a lot of revenue for the team.

For these reasons the Washington football team, needs to rename their football team from Redskin to something else, because as I have proven ‘Redskin’ is a racial slur akin to a group of people’s color, just as ‘negro’ is to black people. The person for whom the team is named after was not at all a Native American, and was proven to be lying about this fact. As well as ‘Redskin’ not being a word of honor and respect, it is a term used to objectify and separate a group of people from the masses for racial and exploitive reasons. Because of all these factors the term ‘Redskin’ is racist term and represents a part of America’s past that needs to be left behind. Not only as a derogatory term, but in the fact the nature of the term effects the ability of the Washington football team to pull in revenue, which is its main purpose.  For these reasons the Washington Redskins need to change their name because this term and others like it don’t belong on a sports team, they belong in America’s past where we should leave it for dead.
