Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Aug 21, 2014 -> 10:24 AM) This many white academics were certainly up in arms about the Chief. My .02 - more people latch on to causes like this because (1) awareness of the issue; and (2) how easily the issue can be resolved. Poverty in the Native American community is systemic. As a result, alcoholism is a major problem on the reservations. The Native Americans were largely eradicated, pushed to some of the least habitable ground in this country, and, consequently, have some of the worst numbers in America - employment, education, substance abuse. While those issues need attention, they are issues that can't be solved in the snap of one's fingers. So they are more difficult issues to get people to rally behind (and, sidenote, there are plenty of "white academics" pushing those issues as well). The name clearly offends certain Native Americans. Hence, the Washington Post receiving letters complaining about the name as early as 1971. Hence, Native Americans publicly requesting the team name to change as recently as 1988. You want hollow? It's hollow to say that "because no one in my circle of friends has ever heard the term used in a derogatory manner, the word has been co-opted and it's not a slur anymore!" It's hollow to say that people can't speak out about something they perceive as an injustice because they aren't talking about larger issues. The only way to get Daniel Snyder to change his position on the team name is to put public pressure on him. The only way to do that is to have "white academic guy" open his mouth. This is largely why I think this issue is almost complete white-people centered BS, just like the Chief nonsense was. A bunch of white, uppity liberals who aren't really taking a stand next to a group, but instead promoting an issue THEY think is necessary for the group. As to the bolded, give me an example on a national scale when this has ever been an issue. Where someone has used redskin/s in a derogatory way. In anything. TV, moves, music, etc. Literally the only thing I can think of is Disney's Peter Pan. And that came out in 1953.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 21, 2014 -> 10:14 AM) Well how about changing your mind? People are allowed to change their minds...but everyone is so afraid of admitting they might have been wrong before...I'll admit, I actually think the woman who said she would support Dan Snyder because she believes the imagery used by sports teams keeps her history alive has a very good point...but if the majority of American Indians are offended by it, than by all means, I'll admit I didn't recognize that before and that in my opinion, we owe it to them to change the name/imagery. But at the same time, I'm not going to sit here and claim I've got some huge amount of skin in the game (no pun intended). I think that's a valid position. I still think the meaning and usage of the word has changed so much that it shouldn't matter, but I can respect someone changing their minds on a topic after learning new information.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 21, 2014 -> 10:03 AM) And if the American Indians are in such a minority position that the one of the only ways for something like this to occur is for others in a more powerful position to take up their cause, then great. I'm not pissing on that fire. But jeesh, just admit it. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is they can't. Because like everyone else who doesn't think it has to be changed, they too were "ok" with it and didn't think twice about it until they needed some cause to latch onto. "Yeah, yeah! That name SHOULD be changed. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just a racist asshole! I'm clearly not an asshole so...yeah!" If you think it should be changed, I can respect that position. But don't act all high and mighty about it like you're a better person for thinking that way.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 21, 2014 -> 09:50 AM) Let me ask you this...when have you ever heard so many white academics taking up a cause that was important to American Indians? That's why this is frustrating to me, anyways. It's hypocrisy. Where were all these white people when American Indians were fighting for more tangible or substantive rights/improved treatment? You don't hear s*** from white people then. But all the sudden when it's time to debate something which requires no effort other than opening up your big mouth or typing away on the internet, the white people all run to the side of the American Indian! "We are brothers in a united cause!" So I don't think people are turning a blind eye to what the American Indians are saying....they are turning a blind eye to what white academic guy on the internet is saying. Because it's f***ing hollow. Bingo. It became a story this year because Snyder was an asshole about it. That created more media fodder. Now suddenly it's the worst thing in the world and "honorable" and "righteous" people are going to take a stand and not use the word anymore. As if magically there was some major shift within the last year.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Aug 21, 2014 -> 09:40 AM) What your wife thinks the term redskin means is, with all due respect, irrelevant to this argument. What do the people who are offended by the term - you know Native Americans - think about this? Clearly enough of them are offended that a movement to change the team name has been in place since 1971, informally, and 1988 formally. I don't understand why you are turning a blind eye to that fact... Her opinion is, but it's just indicative of how people perceive the word. Words are words. People provide words meaning. That word has lost the slur-meaning in 2014. We've moved past it. And people are offended by just about everything. Should we ban words like "fat" and "ugly" in businesses? I'm sure you can find a large percent of people who feel offended by those words too.

Ha. I stayed in the room while my wife watched this last episode. She was getting pissed that I asked about 100 questions. It appears pretty obvious that every single woman on that show is crazy. Like diagnosable-crazy. The guys maybe too, I dunno, they don't talk enough. Still, most of the women are insanely hot. I might tune in next week.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 06:45 PM) Triangle Offense ‏@Tri_Offense 52m Kevin Durant reportedly offered a 10-year deal worth $265 million (plus equity) from Under Armour. Sonics sold in '06 for $350 million. Da-yum.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 09:12 PM) St. Louis Police released the video of the shooting of the convenience store robber yesterday. At first glance, I thought it seemed excessive, but the guy was carrying a knife, was told to stop multiple times and just kept advancing. Seemed like he wanted to die by suicide via cop shooting. You can't expect the cops to get in a fist fight with a knife wielding suspect. WARNING: Suspect gets shot and killed in the video. It's not really graphic, but it happens. http://gawker.com/st-louis-police-release-...dium=socialflow I'm surprised there isn't more uproar over that. You could argue he wasn't a real threat at the moment they started shooting. You also heard a ton of shots. That's the natural instinct I was talking about earlier. When you shoot, you typically empty the clip even if you don't "have" to.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 10:42 PM) Quiet tonight so far in Ferguson but there have been arrests. I wonder when the media will send their people home. Probably after the funeral of Mike Brown next Monday. They can't stay there forever. When the audience numbers start to go down.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Aug 21, 2014 -> 07:28 AM) And Vikings! I can't believe people support a team named after a group of people known for rape, murder, pillage and unquestionably poor hygiene. Clearly the Dolphins are the most offensive.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 21, 2014 -> 12:03 AM) Someday they are going to finally change the name and we can get on with proper respect to the American Indian. I love the fact many newspapers and announcers won't use Redskins. They only will put "the team from Washington." I'm not offended by Ditka. It's neat he is ripping the PC police, but he's wrong here. You can't call a team Redskins. In fact, I'd make the Cleveland Indians change, too. WTF? Yeah, because changing the name of a football team will really jump start that movement. A movement that hasn't been jump started...ever. This response is exactly why this entire scandal is a bunch of nonsense.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 05:18 PM) The word is still a racial slur that's long been used as the name of a football team with an American Indian as it's logo. Even in the context of the team, it refers to American Indians Nope, not anymore it doesn't. It refers to the team nickname. No one uses the word redskins to refer to american indians anymore. No one. It's so antiquated it's laughable as a slur. I asked my wife last night what redskins means. Her football exposure is about 25% of the Superbowl each year. Even she said, you mean the football team? You're basically telling me that slurs can never in the future change meanings and become something different. I think that's bulls***. "Queer" used to be a terrible word for members of the LGBT community. Now it's a term that you're SUPPOSED to use. That happened in about 20 years.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 05:09 PM) Really no it doesn't. I mean, literally just read the word. "Red skins". This isn't like "Antidisestablishmentarianism" changing definitions subtly, it literally spells out for you what it means. So if someone were to say Washington Redskins to you, the first thing you think is an American Indian. Is that right?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 05:05 PM) An NFL team that's named after a racial slur and has an AmerIndian as its logo. Ok, but it's still the football team, not a person or group of people.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 05:02 PM) Why is it so important to you that it remain publicly acceptable to continue using racial slurs? What other racial slurs that have been been subjected to "censorship" by no longer being acceptable socially do you wish you could still use? See above. And it's not about "wishing" to use it. You've got a word that no longer means what it used to mean. It has an entirely different interpretation now.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:51 PM) Um, it's the name of an NFL team. It is likely done millions of times a day. And as for polling, SS showed you a few - that all showed a majority found it offensive. There was the one exception, which you posted, but again that was a laughably bad survey question (which you seemed to agree with given the fact that you assumed it was a typo). Come on. Saying Redskins in 2014 means you are referring to an NFL team, not an American Indian. You know that's true. No one is saying "yeah we got a real issue with those Redskins out west. Really gotta do something about that Redskins problem."

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:51 PM) why should we care whether 100 non-AmerIndians find a racial slur targeted at AmerIndians to be an offensive racial slur? Because if people don't interpret the word as being directed or referring to a certain group, how can it be a slur? I'm sure we can find examples of hundreds of words that USED to be bad, but no one recognizes them that way anymore, and we use them everyday.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:51 PM) Neither will changing it to something that isn't a racial slur. "It doesn't need to be changed" is not a defense when there are people who clearly believe it should be. Count me on the side that hates censorship of all speech, not just what i think is good speech. Forcing the change of language to satisfy a minority isn't good policy in general, especially when no one uses that offensive language as a slur anymore.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:42 PM) This doesn't make it ok. When the basis of changing the name is how offensive it is, and the people claiming it's offensive happen to be mostly white people in need of a cause, I think it puts the issue in proper perspective. It's another rush to be outraged and change something that really doesn't need to be changed and won't cause a bit of difference in how the world operates.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:36 PM) The majority of white/Euro people wouldn't have thought twice about calling someone the N word in 1932 either. It was an insult then too. We have just evolved as a society, and are in a place where many people don't find these things to be OK. It isn't that the nature of the word has changed. It's that we are evolving as a society in our reaction to hurling insults. But no one does this, and hasn't for a very, very long time. That's why this case is different. Again, let's poll 100 people and how many do we honestly think relate Washington Redskins to a football team or an actual person/tribe?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:35 PM) "we've been using this racial slur for decades and you're only just NOW complaining?!" isn't exactly a good defense. It's not really a defense, it's a criticism of white people full of guilt who latched onto the story this summer when they hadn't thought twice about it before. I'm sure you yourself were championing this cause back in the 90's and 00's and have refused to utter the word since, right?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:34 PM) Well, when a number of surveys say one thing and another is an extreme outlier, you have to wonder why. Maybe it's because the question was asked like this: This is like survey 101 here. First, you don't ask a compound question and expect a yes/no answer. That's like asking "Do you like chocolate? Does it get stuck in your teeth?" Second, that question isn't even grammatically correct - no surprise there was some confusion from it. I frankly cannot believe that question made it through any sort of professional review process. I cannot say if that is WHY it was so aberrant in it's results, but it is a pretty big clue. That's gotta be a typo in the article.

QUOTE (TRU @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:32 PM) A lot of words are insults, and people still use them. And I am not even talking about saying "Some redskin cut me off in the parking lot today" just typing that out sounds ridiculous as to why someone would use that as an insult or racist saying. That being said, for a football team that's been around since 1932 I find it a little "eye roll" if you will that its just NOW that people want to wage some big fight against it. As I posted earlier, this is the part that infuriates me. We've been using the name without issue for decades and now that it's a hot topic people are doing the whole faux-outrage thing. I think that was Ditka's main point, which is why I agree with him.

What we need to do is get out of the region for good. They want to continue living like it's 1200 BC, go for it. See ya later.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 20, 2014 -> 04:28 PM) yes, and that 10-year old study has been criticized for poor methodology http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/...s-one-poll-time. Lol, of course it was. Sigh.