REBRAND RACIST MASCOTS
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • How You Can Be Involved
  • RWF Activities and In the News
  • RWF Blog
  • Statements Against the Name
    • RWF Reports
  • Petition Delivery 2018
  • Petition Delivery 2019

New Book Includes Blast at Snyder, R**skins, “Native Mascotry”

2/5/2020

2 Comments

 
By Bill Mosley
David Zirin, sports editor of The Nation and a longtime critic of stereotypical Native American team names and imagery, takes a swipe at the name and owner of the Washington football team in a new book.

We Own the Future:  Democratic Socialism – American Style
is a collection of essays, edited by Kate Aronoff, Peter Drier and Michael Kazin, in which a number of authors explore how socialists of the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stripe might change America if they found themselves in power.  The essays look at the usual front-page issues – economic inequality, racism, policing, climate change, immigration, workers’ rights – as well as a contribution by Zirin on a “socialist” vision of sports.
In his essay, Zirin takes on cities’ sports-stadium giveaways to rich team owners, the exploitation of college athletes, the commercialization of children’s sports, and the persecution of athletes such as Colin Kaepernick who embrace activism along with their athleticism.  But he saves his strongest language for a discussion of the persistence of Native team names and mascots, especially as practiced by the team owned by Daniel Snyder.

Writes Zirin:
If sports and play are truly going to be a place for all, they can’t also be a place where people are marginalized on the basis of race.  That’s why any movement for better sports should also, as a point of pride, stand against all Native American mascotry.
Zirin points to a study – cited in a recent report issued by Rebrand Washington Football -- from the American Psychiatric Association documenting how Native children are harmed by mascots that appropriate and stereotype their heritages.  He then turns his attention to the worst offender:

For decades, Native American activists and allies have fought to get the R**skins [in the book he spells out the word] to change the name.  For decades, they have argued that it is a demeaning insult.  For decades, they have argued that it is the dishonorable product of the team’s original owner, George Preston Marshall, an archsegregationist with a love of minstrelsy whose team was the last in the NFL to sign African American players.

Snyder, the current owner, has refused to listen to these arguments.  “He is a plutocratic brute,” Zirin writes, who “disparages and punishes members of the media who take him to task.  A mass people’s movement should see eradicating his bigotry as a central task.”

A movement, if not yet a mass one, of Native groups and their allies continues to pressure the team to change its name.  Despite Snyder’s claims that the public and even Natives don’t care about the name, continued protests and agitation argue otherwise.  As Snyder stubbornly digs in, sports teams across the country – mostly high schools, but a few colleges – have gotten the message and ditched Native names and mascots.  With outspoken journalists such as Zirin helping to keep the issue before the public, the racist name of the Washington team and other Native names and imagery get pushed a little closer to the rubbish heap of history. 

2 Comments
dissertartion writers link
3/30/2020 07:44:34 pm

David Zirni might have felt the need for him to take a swipe against the coach because he may had too much of it. We all know know that once a person had been triggered so much, he would clap back because that means it has to stop. I understand where he was coming from because I got the chance to read his book. Both sides have their own points. But understanding would be hard to achieve especially if these sides wouldn’t be open for solving the issue.

Reply
DEVRY COURSE link
9/2/2020 03:08:57 am

You have been hired as a consultant for ABC Investment Group. ABC incorporated in 1999 and manages investment portfolios for small to medium size companies. The Director of the company is not up to speed on how unrealized gains and losses as well as realized gains. <a href="https://www.devrycourses.com/product/devry-acct-540-full-course-project-latest/" > ACCT 540 FULL COURSE PROJECT LATEST </a>

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Josh Silver is one of the founders of RWF and is a life time fan that wants the name changed!

    Archives

    February 2022
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly