If the Redskins change their name, how will it affect the collecting hobby?

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

You may recall the Washington Wizards were once called the Bullets. The team felt it was inappropriate and changed the name. And the St John's Redmen are now called the Red Storm. All well and good.

I remember when Stanford changed their name from the 'Indians' to the 'Cardinal'. As a kid, I thought: "What's wrong - they have something against Indians?"

Here's an interesting article on that name change: http://nacc.stanford.edu/mascot.html

[packs]

The thing about names is that if you're appropriating a culture, which the teams are obviously doing by trying to evoke some kind of emotion with the presence of Native American terms or sentiments, you can't tell the culture you're appropriating how to feel about it. So if Native Americans are offended by the appropriation of their culture, that opinion is the only opinion that should matter.

That being said, something I've thought about is the possible repercussions of the names being changed. Native Americans are so marginalized in this country that really their only connection to popular culture or America's zeitgeist is through sports teams. If every sports team with some kind of Native American connection were to change their name, I wonder how Native Americans feel about being totally wiped off the popular culture map.

I see good and bad in appropriation. The bad is offending large groups of people who are already marginalized and were cast off by this country as people who weren't important. The good is that there is at least some semblance of their culture in American minds. Don't know what the solution is other than to find terms and names that Native Americans support.