On Wednesday, a division of the US federal government ruled that the storied NFL franchise the Washington Redskins name was disparaging.
The team was stripped of federal protections for six of its trademarks, including that of their cheerleaders, the Redskinettes. Now this doesn’t mean that the team is going to have to change its name any time soon, but it is one more example of the ever-gathering disapproval that’s raining down upon them. Apologists can argue all they want about the true etymology of the word Redskin, or that the name is meant as an honorific rather than a slur, but it’s irrelevant.
The Native American community, a small and not particularly powerful minority in a vast and powerful nation, have made it clear that they find it an offensive racial pejorative, and that in and of itself should be sufficient motivation for Daniel Snyder, the white, billionaire owner of the team, to step into the world the rest of us live in, or at least the world we hope to live in, and change the name.
I have come up with a few suggestions, which I now offer:
1. The Washington Cherry Blossoms
2. The Washington Indigenous People
3. The Washington 1%
4. The Washington Spooks
5. The Beltway Snipers
6. The Washington House of Lies
7. The Washington Interns (Defensive line known as The Stained Blue Dress)
8. The Washington Anthrax Attack
9. The Washington Department of Doom (Defensive line known as Homeland Security)
10. The Washington Freedom Fighters
