Happy Thanksgiving Daniel Snyder and the Native Americans

I have to wonder why a man as brilliant as Washington’s NFL football team owner, Daniel Snyder, is digging in his heels and refusing to change the name of the football team that he purchased in 1999 – the Redskins. If you look at his career, beginning as an entrepreneurial young teen, he created ways for fans to purchase bus/tickets packages to see the Washington Capitals and later spring break junkets for college students. According to the scaled down version of Snyder’s 49 years on Wikipedia it seems like his first million was his most coveted, eventually putting his moniker on his biggest and most promising venture with his sister, Snyder Communications LP – a worthy name.

But after all he had to be proud of and had accomplished, all that he had built with his family and later through powerful partnerships that he had meticulously cultivated, he accepted the legacy of something that stands counter to the man he once was.

Snyder and I have something in common, unfortunately it’s not a billion dollars. We both grew up during the seventies and eighties, too late to witness the struggle of the Civil Rights movement and too early to understand the tragic aftermath of Vietnam. My generation witnessed greed. Not only did it define us, it tainted who we are. The 1987 movie Wall Street is our chant. So is that what motivates Snyder?

Whatever it is that has blurred Snyder’s sense of right and wrong, and calling anyone a “redskin” is wrong, women should get behind Amanda Blackhorse, a Native American working now in the courts asking that they not be able to profit from the name, an end run around getting Snyder to change the name. Blackhorse is not having an easy time, not surprising since many, many Native Americans have tried before her.  If Congress wasn’t so hated, the letter they sent to Snyder might mean something.

A press release was sent from the U.S. House of Representatives announcing that several members were calling for a name change:

In their letter to Mr. Snyder, Members of Congress acknowledged that “Native Americans throughout the country consider the ‘R-word’ a racial, derogatory slur akin to the ‘N-word’ among African Americans or the ‘W-word’ among Latinos.  Such offensive epithets,” the letter continued, “would no doubt draw wide-spread disapproval among the NFL’s fan base.  Yet the national coverage of Washington’s NFL football team profits from a term that is equally disparaging to Native Americans.”

Lawyers for the team have used an AP-GfK poll of “1,004 adults on both land lines and cell phones” in May that found 79 percent of those polled were not in favor of changing the name.  How many were Native American? That wasn’t one of the identifiers, which makes the poll obsolete in my opinion.

Snyder has said NEVER with all caps about changing the name, which I don’t understand. Changing the name would cement his legacy in history, a great legacy. Until then, what kind of pressure could get the name changed that hasn’t done it so far. Could Women consider boycotting sponsors of the team: Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Sprint, and FedEx. In fact, the team plays at FedEx field, but these are major business accounts and it’s not easy to make a dent in these brands. But, are we hypocrites if we celebrate Thanksgiving, the very holiday that we honor the Native Americans for teaching us how to survive and do nothing to assist in their ongoing struggle?

Seriously, Redskins is a slur. Native Americans have spent more than 50 years trying to get it changed and their pleas are ignored and discarded. It’s wrong and the organizations that sponsor the Washington team should be held accountable as well as the team. There is no gray area. I’ve made a little graphic to help below. For the holiday season, let’s get behind the people who got behind us. The people who befriended us and who we celebrate at Thanksgiving. America wouldn’t be here without them. The Pilgrims would have died out and there would be no colonies because the English would have nowhere to come. There would be no Thomas Jefferson, no George Washington, no U.S. Constitution. Get busy people.

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