“Redskins” 0
I’m ambivalent over the movement to get the Washington Redskins to change the name of their team (which, by extension, should extend to the Cleveland Indians and the Atlanta Braves and even to my own alma mater, as well as to many other high school, college, and pro teams), as I used to be a Redskins fan, back in the Jack Kent Cooke days, before the dark days of the incompetent and egomaniacal Dan Snyder.
On the whole, as I consider how Manifest Destiny treated Native Americans as lower life forms to be abused and exterminated, and then later as figures of comic relief in Hollywood oaters, I’m inclined to think, yeah, do it, make at least a gesture of atonement for the genocide.
It will not atone, but it would be a gesture.
One thing, though, I can say quite heartily is that the fuss has brought all sorts of inanity to the surface.
