Monday, February 03, 2014

The Washington Redskins. Or What's In A Name.


If you have followed the discussion about the name change proposal for  Washington Redskins, I strongly recommend reading this article (to the very end)

It both explains why such proposals are not very important for at least some groups of Native Americans and why, at the same time, they can be very important, and it offers a lot of important nuance and additional information: 

It explains about the racial profiling of those who live on the reservation, it mentions the very high unemployment rate and other large problems the locals face and, in my opinion, it asks why we are not having national movements to fix the enormous economic problems of many Native Americans.

This is something I see missing in the privilege-based debates about gender, race or ethnicity or both of those at the same time.  Despite certain clear benefits that come from introspection in understanding one's own privileged position on various social thermometers, that understanding doesn't necessarily result in workable proposals for change about the underpinnings, so to speak.  We need more resources for the reservations, more resources for Native Americans in general,  not just the removal of team names which appropriate Native American history.