More than 100,000—that’s the number of people who have signed a petition calling for the NFL’s Washington Commanders to change their name back to the racial slur that had branded the franchise for decades: the Redskins. The petition was created by a Native American organization that says the word is about pride and heritage. They are pushing back against the long fight led by Indigenous people to make sure the word “Redskins” is deposited into the dustbin of history.
This is a word I normally would neither write nor utter. But in this context, I think it is important to feel the weight of the violence of the word, which derives from the scalping of Native Americans by professional bounty hunters who were paid per “red-skin.”
Now, I understand why so many fans want the old name back. For them, it’s not associated with racist violence, but rather with Super Bowls and long-lost days of professional sports acclaim. And, yes, the name Commanders truly is terrible and is crying out to be changed. It certainly doesn’t conjure images of the nation’s capital or gridiron glory—just of Russell Crowe wearing a puffy shirt and a ponytail.
I also get it that people associate the Commanders with the person who, until last summer, held the title of the Most Disgusting Franchise Owner in Sports, Daniel Snyder, who dragged the team through twenty-five years of scandal, bigotry, and irrelevancy. I understand why die-hards want to turn the page. But before looking backward for a new name, let’s be clear about the facts.
Snyder was a champion of the former name and only changed it because of grassroots pressure led by Native American youth, as well as a mighty push from team sponsors following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.
But now, like the villain in a horror movie rising from the dead, the old name is resurfacing—and, frankly, I’m not surprised. This is 2023, not 2020, and reactionary politics are rampaging across the political landscape. A meager victory in professional football from the summer of 2020 is just as endangered as all of those corporate diversity jobs that were in vogue three years ago. It’s all connected.
Before Washington, D.C., and the NFL slouch back into performative and lackluster actions masking underlying white supremacy, let us remember that tribal councils across the United States had long asked, to Snyder’s deaf ears, that the name be changed.
Let us also remember that the name only exists because the first owner of the team was a stone-cold racist named George Preston Marshall. The execrable Marshall was an archsegregationist and white supremacist who made sure the team was the last in the NFL to integrate, doing so only under threat of having their stadium seized by the administration of President John F. Kennedy. (That stadium was built on federal land.)
Marshall, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963, had a deep affection for the South, and for years had the song Dixie played before home games.
To everyone celebrating the end of Daniel Snyder, I’m with you. To those who hate the name the Commanders, I’m with you. But to those who want a return to the old name of the team: Stop it.
This team has a championship past and a jagged scar on its history. Its brand was built on the mass extermination of Indigenous peoples. To put it simply, if your team name celebrates genocide, it’s time to come up with a new one.