Originally Posted by knickballer
lol, just because I say the team should keep it's name I'm the "resident racist".. Get real
I also know about the crimes the Europeans committed against the Native Americans so you don't need to lecture me on the subject(referring to Mavs post)...
Why aren't the KC Chiefs, Cleveland Indians
and other sports franchises under the hot seat for their name?
Why aren't teams that use certain animals as their name/mascott get a free pass?
The Chiefs are totally an ok name. It is a rank/title/position among native tribes. I think it actually pays tribute to native americans. The equivalent to a chief in the european context is a lord.
The indians are a name born of ignorance, but not malice. The orgins of the why we call native american's indians is because:
Europeans at the time of Christopher Columbus's voyage often referred to all of South and East Asia as "India" or "the Indias/Indies," sometimes dividing the area into "Greater India," "Middle India," and "Lesser India." The oldest surviving terrestrial globe, by Martin Behaim in 1492 (before Columbus' voyage), labels the entire Asian subcontinent region as "India".
Columbus carried a passport in Latin from the Spanish monarchs that dispatched him ad partes Indie ("toward the regions of India") on their behalf. When he landed in the Antilles, Columbus referred to the resident peoples he encountered there as "Indians" in the mistaken belief that he had reached the Indian Ocean. Although Columbus' mistake was soon recognized, the name stuck; for centuries the native people of the Americas were collectively called "Indians." This misnomer was perpetuated in place naming; the islands of the Caribbean were named, and are still known as, the West Indies.
Redskins is much worse because redskins was a well known slur.
Eg. "Damned redskins need to be scalped"
"lets kill some redskins and redcoats (british troops)"
"Push the redskins off this land and we can take the resources"
"kill the bufflo, starve the redskin"
Edit: the difference between a name like the blackhawks, the chiefs, or the seminoles and a name like the redskins, is the same as the difference between the ninjas, or the samurais or the shoguns and the japs or the slant eyes.