The
origin of my last name actually just comes from a more Norwegian-sounding
pronunciation of a word pairing that to some American naturalization officer
sounded like “Buckeye”. The name was
supposed to be Bukk Oy, or Island of the Male Goats. But for a period of time in college, I joked
with those less familiar with my last name’s origins that it was actually an
Ojibwe Indian name (and that I was still waiting on that casino money). The irony is that as pale-skinned as me and
most of my family is, my grandpa (on my Mom’s side) said he actually has reason
to believe that we are part Native American.
And you can definitely see a slightly darker pigment in him and my
little sister than you might expect if they were strictly descended from
northern Europeans. And I guess it makes
me about 1/32 to 1/64 Native American.
Which earns me absolutely nothing.
It’s
such a small part that it doesn’t even get one day out of each month. But the part of a morning that I did give it
some time last week told me something interesting regarding the recent debate
over the Washington Redskins’ name change debate. It said that it was a little offended. This is genuinely surprising to me, because
for the most part, I wasn’t offended by the name. In fact, everything about my demographic has
been immune to repression over the years; White, male, blond-haired, blue-eyed.
And
while I haven’t been too much in favor of it ever, the part of me that wasn’t
against it rationalized it in a very simple way. It’s about money. The Washington Redskins, a very successful
NFL brand, have been making money off their moniker for many generations- and
there simply hasn’t been an organization with enough political or monetary sway
to take them down. The Washington
Bullets (arguably a less-offensive name) changed their name to the Wizards in
large part because the NBA is a less-successful league and the Bullets a much
less successful franchise.
I don’t understand why there hasn’t
been a bigger uproar about how racist the Cleveland Indians franchise is,
actually. Not even their name so much,
which is ironically pretty politically correct at this point- I have it on good
authority that they prefer American Indians to Native Americans anyway[i]- but
rather their logo of Chief Wahoo, which is a ridiculous and downright offensive
caricature. But while their logo might
be insensitive, the name itself is pretty innocuous, if inaccurate.
Now I would usually say in this
particular case, “Why doesn’t Congress find something more important to do?” Yet the first thing they might respond with
is “There’s enough Congresspeople to take care of most of these things.” It’s important not only for the country’s view
of itself that it do right by one of its most marginalized demographics, but
also for other countries’ view of us.
Cowboys and Indians are one of the things that other powerful countries
like Germany most closely associate with us.
And let’s be honest our own reputation in the human rights category isn’t
completely spotless, either. On top of it all, this should be something American
football strives to improve, if it wants to improve its stature in the world as
a whole.
The
part of the name that did make sense was mostly in how it connected to one of its
biggest rivals. Everyone makes a
connection between Cowboys and Indians, and the fact that a franchise named
after the latter was huge rivals with one named the former had a really nice
ring to it. Given their lack of
geographical proximity, it could even be argued that their shared name theme
was what made them rivals in the first place.
I don’t want an NFL whose nicknames don’t pay homage to the history and
spirit of this country.[ii]
So
under the right circumstances, I think the ‘Skins should be allowed to keep the
overall theme of their team nickname. It
would save them having to change most of their color and logo scheme, and pay
homage to the history of their team, while acknowledging that “mistakes were
made”. The first and most common sense
thing to do would be to turn to the local tribes and lobby groups for the
Indians and ask what they would recommend.
Perhaps Braves, or even Indians.
But I have a better idea. Name it
after a semi-local tribe. The
Algonquins, let’s say. Then you could
call them the ‘Quins for short!
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