Pros And Cons Of Washington Redskins

Schools and professionals sports teams with mascots, chants, and team names that contain racial slurs or insulting caricatures relating to Native American should change their names because they are offending and demeaning to groups of people who have been insulted and abused since people first started settling this continent, their people’s home for millennia. Unlike African Americans who have also been under social ridicule, Native Americans have never had the numbers or a loud enough voice to inspire a change in the way people treat them. The Native American people have been culturally scarred by the treatment of their ancestors and have to hear people cheer for the “Redskins”, a word originally used when encouraging people to bring in Indians scalps for a reward, it only cuts the wound deeper. However in a country where the white majority has never had to deal with persecution on this level find it hard to relate to the Native American

The owner of the Washington redskins argues his side of the debate by inserting an anecdote in his letter to his fans talking about his time going to a redskins game when he was 6 years old. he invokes a sense of pathos in his writing speaking of the team 's respect of Native Americans and how they honor them with the redskin team name. However his use of tradition for a reason to keep the name immediately weakens his case saying “ That tradition -- the song and the cheer -- it mattered so much to me as a child ” a child who didn 't understand the nature of the name or the behavior of the fans as anything more than people cheering on their team and having fun dressing up as their mascot. This appeal to tradition is not a justifiable way to convince people to come to his side of the argument. Anytime there has been a push for change in this country the push for the abolition of slavery or the women 's civil rights movement people use the appeal of tradition or their freedom of speech to argue for their cause but this does not mean