All Sports Team Names Should Be Banned

There is is a long history of Native American team names in professional, collegiate, and high school athletics. Professional Teams names include: Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks, Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Chiefs and Washington Redskins. Collegiates teams include: Florida State Seminoles, St. John's University Redmen, and Miami of Ohio University Redskins. These teams names are some the tribal history of names and mascots in sports. “Names including: Redmen, Warriors, Savages, Braves and Chiefs commonly show up in sports today.”(What’s in a Team’s name).

In the late 1960 's the use of Indian names and mascots in sports started to be contested by activists and academics. Many team names and mascots were guilty of appropriating Native American Culture, and needless to say the Native Americans wanted things to change. Many Colleges and Universities responded positively—Stanford University changing from Prince Lightfoot to the Cardinal, Dartmouth College changing from the Indians to Big Green—as well as many smaller schools, from high school to elementary changing mascots out of respect for Native Americans. The major roadblock came about with the professional teams: Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, and of course, the Washington Redskins. These teams have refused to change their names to this day, but the Native Americans and their supporters continue to protest.

Teams in every sport, at every level of competition, have a mascot. It is the mascot that represents the competitive spirit and team identity, motivating players and fans alike. Does the symbol chosen have any impact on whether a team wins or loses? Unlikely. But the choice of a Native American mascot continues to ignite debate and controversy among athletes, fans and alumni, as well as those people who might otherwise be disinterested in sports. Utilizing an Indian mascot is nothing more than a veiled attempt at hate speech.

To begin with, it is racist and derogatory to use Native Americans as mascots. One town in Montana, Ronan, calls its sports teams the “Chiefs” and the “Maidens”. In several Native American cultures, maidens are considered less than or lower than women. Also, the mascots of other schools are often animals. Using Native

A common question about this topic is, “Insult or Honor?” Professional clubs aren’t the only ones with Native American names and mascots. Teams across our nation are preaching constantly it 's for honor not as an insult. The public views on

When one typically thinks about a Native American, they picture this ideological representation of a Native American as depicted by popular culture. Native Americans are underrepresented on television, in books, in news, and all other forms of media. We, as a society, have chosen a path of ignorance in which we have chosen not to educate ourselves or our future generations on the true culture of Native Americans. We have ignored the negative impacts of using mascots such as “Redskins” and instead let it serve as a stereotype to fill our heads with unrealistic views and understandings of Native American culture. The resulting misconceptions leave many Native American students with a feeling of inferiority and questioning their self-worth.

Teams that have the name like Redskins, Indians, and Red Raiders are racist terms used as mascots. Interchange the name with the Negroes, the Jews or the Asians and that sounds even worse but, it all means the same thing. They are all racist terms that no one should use to represent something like a team name. According to racismagainstindians.org, Native Americans were banned from practicing their own religion and would be often thrown in jail if they were caught all the way up to 1978. But when nonnative people at sporting events would dance and sing their songs it would be completely okay. This makes no sense,

Dating back several hundreds of years ago, Native Americans have been deprived, dehumanized, and demoralized ever since Christopher Columbus and his men came and seized the land from the Indigenous Peoples. There have been many tactics that have been used to strip the dignity of the Indigenous Peoples, but the use of an American Indian sports mascot is one tactic that has been in effect since 1932. There are some supporters of these various American Indian sports mascots such as Dan Snyder, the current team owner of the Washington Redskins, that do not feel that these sports mascots have any negative connotations. Dan Snyder may have had a few points when he wrote his letter, but he fails to realize that the American Indian Sports Mascots are

Sports teams use "Indian," as well as many other mascots with related themes, to honor those who are native to

The controversy over the naming of sports teams after ethnic groups has been boiling since the mid-twentieth century. Sports teams in America, ranging from Pee-wee leagues, high schools, and colleges to Professional sports, have used any enumeration of nick names and mascots by which to represent their team with pride and sometimes even comedy. However, the lines of political correctness have been greatly and maybe even intentionally blurred in terms of the use of specific ethnic groups within team names and the use of the stereotypical image of those teams’ caricatures, the native-American in particular. Of the four major professional sports team franchises included in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL that do possess ethnic monikers, only two are of Caucasoid based ethnicity, whereas the other 5 are direct references to Native American ethnicity or stereotypes

Many people look at the Washington Redskins logo and see it just the same as any of the other NFL teams’ logos. So, why take the time and money to change their brand for the very few amount of people that think it’s little offensive? In the past couple of years, a lot of people see many pro and college sports teams differently because of their mascot or logo. Native Americans, whose culture diminished ever since Europeans stepped onto the shores of the East, are used as branding for all levels and divisions of athletics teams. A lot of people argue for both sides of the conflict, with one side reasoning that the logos look racist and disrespect Native American culture, and the other side reasoning that they honor Indians and there is not even an issue. However, a ton of people fighting for the Indian mascot’s removal do not know how Native Americans themselves truly feel about them. Also, the general public probably does not know either that many schools actually work with specific tribes to make sure that they respect their culture. The United States should not ban Native American mascots because most Native Americans don’t get insulted from sports teams’ logos and many teams work with tribes to make sure that they don’t disparage Indian customs and traditions.

The debate about whether or not the Washington Redskins should change their name has been a topic for a long time. Some Native Americans have often considered the name a racial slur and think that the league should get rid of the name as it doesn’t represent Native Americans in the best way possible. In 1937 the Redskins moved to Washington and decided to retain the name even though it had faced backlash then. Since then the team has over time shown more caution on using slogans that may disrespect Native Americans. Some slogans they did use include “On the Warpath, with a cartoon drawing of an angry Indian, and another called “Teepee Talk, featuring a clip-art Indian sticking his head out of a tepee” (Shapira, 2016, Para.5). There will always be a debate if the team should get rid of its name but for right now Washington’s football teams name is the Redskins.

The dispute over whether Native American mascots should be used as a team symbol dates back to the 1970’s (Price 2). There are those who are passionately against Native American mascots. These advocators insist that Native American mascots are degrading to

     Many people do not consider themselves supporting Native American mascots that depict them in a bad manner. But when people walk around with a Atlanta Braves shirt on with a Indian with a tomahawk in his hand, it is degrading to the Indians. It is stereotyping them. School mascots and Sports team’s mascots are named after groups of people for no reason known. Notre Dame was founded by Irish Catholics, but their sports team was named the Fighting Irish. The name Fighting Irish has nothing to do with the Irish Catholics, it depicts them in a wrong way.(Price, 3). Team names can be changed to similar names that do not depict certain groups of people. Like the Redskins can be called the Red Hawks or the

Almost everybody loves going to sporting events and seeing all the excited fans as well as the energized mascots. There has been quite a variety of mascots and logos seen in schools whether it be high schools or colleges and in professional leagues. According to a search done by an ESPN FiveThirtyEight reporter through a database known as MascotDB, out of the 42,624 teams in the database at the time there were 2,129 sports teams that have reference to Native Americans (Munguia). That’s about a five percent of all mascots while Native American only make up roughly two percent of the population of the United States in 2014 (US Census). There has been much debate and controversy around mascots and team names that reference Native American throughout the years and gaining more attention especially with the most public debate regarding National