Thoughts On Racism And Football

A couple days ago, I posted a preview of the Washington Redskins that included a simple 3 sentence aside that mentioned that the word “redskins” is an offensive racial slur. I expected some heat from fans of the team, but I didn’t expect it erupt into a heated “discussion” about racism and ignorance.

The thing is, the term truly is racist. It is. People can debate the history of the team name and how it’s supposedly supposed to “honor” the Native American people all they want. It doesn’t “honor” anyone. The term has been used throughout American history in a derogatory manner toward that specific group of people. It’s a racial slur by definition.

I get that I’m in the minority; that most football fans, and that more than half of Native Americans don’t currently find the term offensive. That’s ok. It still doesn’t make it any less racist, nor does it make racism and the use of racial slurs acceptable.

I believe that as a society we should continue to work to remove all racism from our nation. Surely we can all agree on that.

Now on to the business of running this site. I’ve removed the article on the Washington Redskins that begun this, and replaced it one that does not contain the 3 sentence aside about racism. I’ve also locked the comments on both that article and this one.

Why do this? For 2 reasons:

Mainly, because this is a football site and the discussion here needs to be about football. There is an appropriate place to have a discussion about racism, but it isn’t here.

The 2nd is that those people who chose to participate in the “discussion” chose to ignore this sites commenting policy. Since our current software was making it impossible for me to moderate out the profanity and personal attacks, I’ve decided that this was the best course of action.

I stand by my original decision to bring light to the issue that the team name is also a racial slur. The comment was included as an attempt to raise awareness, and since thousands of people have read the article I believe that I’ve done that. Now it’s time to return to the topic of football and celebrate the common love that we all share for this great game.