From the astroturfed pens of Pop Warner to the professional stadiums of the NFL, American football teams almost universally have a recognizable team name. For the majority of these teams, the names they choose tend to be categorized into three archetypes: a climate-related phenomenon, a type of animal or one of many groups of long-gone peoples.
For sports teams, these names are a way of expressing their presence. They convey certain universal truths that these teams want to perpetuate, such as bravery, zeal or tenacity — the quintessential tough things. These team names, for the most part, are completely harmless, with some rather blaring exceptions. For instance, consider three of the most commonly-used team names with respect to the categorizations above: Oklahoma City Thunder, Cleveland Bulldogs and Washington Redskins.
The blaring exception is the third one.
These supposedly “long-dead” indigenous peoples are actually still around, and they constitute over 2.6% of the U.S. population. The usage of this naming convention by American football teams is a spit to their faces; it’s a downright problematic practice that perpetuates certain white supremacist stereotypes that are fundamentally integrated within American culture.
Currently, there are more than 2,000 mascots in the United States that utilize the image of Indigenous peoples. The vast majority of which can be characterized as caricatures of those they represent. These mascots are to the Indigenous peoples what blackface is to African Americans: none serve as accurate representation of the people whose name they appropriate. This further perpetuates unmistakably racist conceptualizations.
For starters, there’s nothing more blatantly racist than the names of these teams themselves. “Redskins,” “Redmen” and “Chieftains” are three of the most popular team names referencing Indigenous Americans. These terms are no different from other racial slurs that insult the skin color of ethnic groups. Yet, they continue to be normalized and perpetuated within modern nomenclature due to their affiliation with professional football teams.
As a result, these names are adopted by lower-level middle schools and high schools that seek to replicate the likeness of the teams they so admire. This may be an even worse problem given the fact that there are thousands of these lower-level teams for any one professional team. One doesn’t need to look far to see such examples — Anaheim High School’s football team is named “Colonists,” taken from the Indigenous tribe Comanches.
Another topic of concern regarding Indigenous peoples’ appropriation by sports teams is in the physical mascots utilized by these teams. From nonsensical headdresses and overly exaggerated red complexions to grotesquely misrepresented “native dances,” these mascots serve as physical representations of the vestiges of white supremacy still normalized in American culture.
The remaining Indigenous peoples of America — whose ancestors the United States conquered, subjugated and genocided in its fervent pursuit of Manifest Destiny — now have to live with the fact that their most popular mainstream representation is through the fictitious characterizations conjured by their oppressors.
For a people whose name and likeness are so liberally used to perpetuate false notions, one would think that Indigenous people would receive some compensation for it. The NFL, as it stands, earns up to $13 billion per year, surely some of it could be distributed to the people they caricaturize.
The rotten cherry on top of this entire story is the fact that the majority of Indigenous peoples live in some of the worst possible living conditions within the North American continent.
It’s ironic to consider that those who come to the defense of this overtly blatant racism often fall back on the same arguments posed by those that defend the existence of Confederate Monuments. In other words, they’re all cut from the same cloth. These are the same individuals who often make references to the defense of “culture,” “heritage” and “tradition” when it comes to the defense of white supremacy.
If your supposed tradition relies on the degradation of a community and the satirical use of the racist characterizations your ancestors used to justify their subjugation, maybe it’s time you get rid of them. If your heritage prospers off of the misery and suffering of others, maybe it’s time for you to stop being proud of it.
For the Indigenous peoples of whose land we stole, ancestors we murdered and children we currently keep in perpetual poverty, the least we could do is stop destroying their likeness.
Jaden Nguyen is an Opinion Intern for the summer 2024 quarter. He can be reached at jadenpn@uci.edu
Edited by Trista Lara, Ben De Guzman and Jacob Ramos.
