By Spencer Schneier, Staff Writer

Published Oct. 8, 2014

Recently, The Carolinian’s Editor-in Chief Joseph Abraham addressed the controversy stemming from the Washington Redskins football team losing their trademark.

In his column, Cup of Joe, he made the common appeal that because the name is offensive, it should be changed. While this argument works on some levels, it leaves itself open to the response that goes something like, “well yeah, but then tall people are offended by the New York Giants mascot so they should have to change their name.”

Yes, the name is offensive to a particular group of people, but that is not why it should be changed.

The real issue with the mascot and logo is that they remove agency from a culture of people, and they openly mock a culture, which has been systematically eliminated by the United States throughout its history.

Popular culture in the United States has a history of belittling those whom are most vulnerable, at times reducing blacks, women and American Indians to mere stereotypes, and forcing them into certain caricatures.

One famous example of this is the infamous minstrel shows of the 19th century. These “performances” featured white actors dressed in blackface, and they would perpetuate racist views of African-Americans.

What Washington Redskins fans do essentially amounts to 21st century minstrel shows, but with American Indians and not African-Americans serving as the target. Redskin fans will regularly dress in “redface,” which is an equivalent to the now taboo practice of blackface.

The main difference between redface and blackface is what was mentioned above- blackface is not acceptable within our culture, but redface is.

The idea of a group of football fans celebrating a team that references black culture in a way that reduces them to a group of watermelon-eating sub-humans is horrifying (I cringe as I write these words), but the idea that a group of football fans can dress with feathers in their hair, holler at no one in particular, and paint themselves in redface is something that many people passionately defend.

Americans did not stand for that kind of treatment of African-Americans, which makes it remarkably incongruent that they do so for American Indians. In a country that has strived for fairness, and equality like the United States, it is both shocking and appalling that we continue to allow this level of institutionalized bigotry.

As of 2003, there were 532 federally recognized American Indian tribes in the United States. The idea that one monolithic portrayal of their culture in the form of the Redskins can be an honor is insulting to the basic intelligence of the American people.

For a culture that has been so decimated by the direct actions of the United States, we owe it both to ourselves and to them to take a step towards justice. It is hard to remember (due to portrayals in many Westerns – looking at you John Wayne) that American Indians are human beings, and not a feature of the West like tumbleweed or buffaloes.

American pop culture has sadly created an angry and savage portrayal of American Indians, where they are vicious animals that want to kill, loot and rape the white settlers.

Their remedy to this outcry was to create a second stereotype: the noble savage. This is most prominently featured in Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves, and while it is less harming (it does give American Indians some human agency), it also continues to portray American Indians as a part of nature, and not human.

When combining all of this, it becomes clear that mocking and reducing American Indians the way the Washington Redskins logo does is unacceptable.

Slowly but surely, Americans pushed out the racist ideals that allowed minstrel shows, and they will do the same for these present-day wrongs.

America, founded on the ideas of freedom, liberty and equality, is a country that has seen many contradictions throughout her history to those ideals. What separates the United States, however, is the desire to correct and right these wrongs.

Changing the Redskins name is not simply the right thing to do, but it is the American thing to do.