A Washington Post poll released Thursday reveals that a vast majority of Native Americans don’t have a problem with Washington’s NFL team mascot, the Redskins.
Over the course of five months and hundreds of interviews with Native Americans, researchers discovered that 90 percent of those surveyed are not offended by the team name — even after what the paper called a “national movement to change the football team’s moniker.”
According to the Post, the attitudes of Native Americans toward the Redskins name is largely unchanged from a 12-year-old poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, despite several years of vocal protests against the name.
The Redskins are embroiled in a fight to regain federal trademark protections, which were canceled by a federal judge in July (though the cancellation does not officially go into effect until the team exhausts all court appeals). In 2013, as the fight over the trademark and accusations of racial insensitivity percolated, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder told USA Today that he had no intention of ever changing the team name:
“We will never change the name of the team,” Snyder told USA TODAY Sports this week. “As a lifelong Redskins fan, and I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season.”
What if his football team loses an ongoing federal trademark lawsuit? Would he consider changing it then?
“We’ll never change the name,” he said. “It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”
