New poll finds 9 in 10 Native Americans aren’t offended by Redskins name – The Washington Post

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

Related Post Roulette

13 Responses

  1. Vikram Bath says:

    I’m curious who they are counting as Native American. If they are allowing for self reports, then 99% of the Native Americans surveyed would be white people.Report

    • Kim in reply to Vikram Bath says:

      Yes, boy howdy. There’s no Native Americans in Pennsylvania — no recognized tribes, at any rate.

      So, yes, let’s go poll PA! Huzzah! You found… what, someone with 1/64th indian blood by fuzzy recollection?????Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Vikram Bath says:

      The poll, which has a 5.5 percentage-point margin of sampling error, was conducted by randomly calling cellular and landline phones. It asked questions only of people who identified themselves as Native American, after being asked about their ethnicity or heritage.Report

  2. notme says:

    You mean it’s only a few folks pushing this agenda that the media are listening to? I’m shocked!Report

    • Will H. in reply to notme says:

      Could have told you that a long time ago.

      “Redskins” isn’t abrasive, because it’s just dull.
      It really doesn’t mean anything. Maybe about as much as having an Indian head on a penny.

      Calling the Atlanta baseball team the “Braves” is insulting, because of what happened around Georgia about 150 years ago.

      Big difference.Report

  3. j r says:

    Maybe the folks that they polled had more important things to worry about.Report

    • InMD in reply to j r says:

      That’s what I have always figured. They’ve got bigger problems to deal with than the name of a football team.

      I’m a big Redskins fan so I’m used to hearing about this. I have a list of conditons of surrender on the name issue that I could live with as a fan, and I get that it really isn’t consistent with modern sensibilities. Still, outside of a small activist group of Native Americans (whose views I do think should be taken seriously), the controversy is much more among predominantly white sports journalists, (some) of their readers, and people who aren’t even into football but love getting offended on behalf of others.Report

    • notme in reply to j r says:

      The folks that don’t care are obviously low information voters or haven’t been properly educated by the liberals as to why this is such an important issue.Report

      • Will H. in reply to notme says:

        Last poll I saw, over half the Navajo could not name the president of the United States.

        There are a lot less than half of Americans who could tell how to pronounce Russell Begaye’s last name correctly.Report

        • Will H. in reply to Will H. says:

          To be clear here:

          1) “Begay” is a very common Navajo surname. “Begaye” is a variant of that.
          2) The final E is not vocalized. It would be more accurately represented for the native English speaker as an apostrophe or a superscript E.
          3) The G is what really throws the native English speaker. It’s pronounced as “ZH.”
          4) The accent is on the second syllable.

          The point here being:

          1) You don’t have to be an Indian to know how to correctly pronounce the name of the current President of Navajo Nation.
          2) You *DO* have to be around Indians, at least a little bit, in order to know that type of stuff.
          3) Most people fail at #2.Report

  4. trizzlor says:

    So they’re only offending 500,000 Native Americans.Report

  5. Kazzy says:

    From the link:

    “The professional football team in Washington calls itself the Washington Redskins. As a Native American, do you find that name offensive, or doesn’t it bother you?”

    That strikes me as a very poorly worded question.

    More here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2016/05/19/National-Politics/Polling/release_424.xml

    56% are not registered with a tripe.
    79% live in areas where 0% of land in zip code is tribal/reservation.

    It also seems like a subset of respondents were offered a “comprehension question” following up on the relevant one here and responses indicated that interviewees did understand the question as stated.Report

  6. “Only 10% of Native Americans polled found the name ‘Redskins’ more offensive than the way Daniel Snyder has been running the team.”Report