A long-lasting disgrace: Should the washington redskins change their name?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say I know that those who want to keep the name are not ruthless, mean people. What I do know is that they are seeing the ordeal in an egotistical, narrow-minded fashion. In his open letter to the public regarding the Redskins name controversy, team owner Dan Snyder went off on a nostalgic tangent as he recalled all the amazing memories he created as a child at his first Redskins game. To Snyder, I pose a question- why would changing the name to be culturally accepting obliterate fond childhood memories? The answer is that it wouldn’t. My own question is this- why is it historically so incredibly difficult for Americans to acknowledge and fi x racial inequality? Are people that afraid of losing tradition? At one point in history, slavery was traditional. And it took an alarmingly long time for people to settle down and accept that it is never a good tradition to treat minorities with such blatant disrespect. Nowadays, it is completely socially unacceptable to express noticeable racism - so people express it in more subtle ways for no reason other than that they are afraid of change. Those same individuals that claim the Redskins name simply can’t be changed because their childhood memories are so important also like to say that the name was given to honor the Native American people. Th is is literally hilarious- it is so ridiculous that you would think it is a satire. You see, there is no possible way we can argue that the name was given with positive intent. The name was probably given a long time ago to cash out on the popularity of “Indians” in old western films and such. Americans have absolutely never honored the Native American people, and most don’t pay enough attention to know that they are an incredibly impoverished culture. Reservation life is terrible, and those who live there are stricken with sky-high rates of poverty, obesity, diabetes, violence and teen suicide. Also, please take a closer look at the name itself: Redskins. The name is an obvious racial slur regarding the skin color of a certain nationality. It would not go over well if a team was named the Yellowskins, Brownskins or Whiteskins. If it is so difficult to prove that a team name is not offensive, the odds are that it is. If the name of the team were to be changed, America would be taking a great step to banish one of the most prominent displays of racism in the public eye. For now, some people will cry and whine about how they have lost all of their happy childhood memories and there is no tradition left in the world.