At long last, the Washington football team is changing its offensive team name. Which other sports franchise will be next?
One of the most remarkable aspects of the Washington NFL team deciding to change its nickname from an ethnic slur to a nonethnic slur is how quickly the organization seemed to flip on the matter. (Especially considering owner Daniel Snyder’s famous claim that it would NEVER — using all caps here, as he demanded — happen.) The NFL’s season begins — or at least, very hopefully, planning to begin — on September 10, but the team’s announcement makes it clear the name will change before then. That means Washington has to come up with a new name, a new logo, a new marketing scheme and an entire new identity in less time than it takes to play half a season. It feels like another example of 2020 moving too rapidly to even comprehend.
It is very likely that this happened because FedEx and some other team sponsors made clear that they no longer thought it made business sense to be associated with an ethnic slur. But focusing on the proximate reason for the about-face ignores all the context in Snyder’s hands-tied, through-gritted-teeth press release. The movement to change the team’s name has existed for more than 50 years — there was an organized protest of 2,000 people outside the team’s Super Bowl win over Buffalo in 1992 — and, as noted by the Athletic’s Lindsey Adler, Native American activists had begun to notch victories against the team and its name in recent years, including Suzan Harjo and Amanda Blackhorse persuading the U.
