Indians Angry About an NFL Team Name — for a Very Un-woke Reason

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time,” goes a saying attributed to medieval English poet John Lydgate. If society minded this truth, perhaps the mistakes made by listening to fringe social-media mobs would be fewer and farther between. A case in point is a story about an American-Indian group that’s angry and wants a National Football League team’s name changed.

But it’s not what you think.

Rather, the Native American Guardian’s Association (NAGA) demands that the Washington Commanders change their name back to the “Redskins.”

Yes, you read that right. In fact, the organization is threatening a boycott to apply pressure, as an MSN.com-featured article reported Tuesday. Breitbart had featured the story previously (the MSN version is clickbait), writing that the NAGA

posted a meme to its X account (formerly known as Twitter) with the message to “Educate not eradicate,” and wants the team to go back to its original name.

The group, led by founder Eunice Davidson, sent a letter to the owners and executives of the Washington Commanders “Formally Requesting The Team Revitalize it’s [sic] Relationship With The American Indian Community & Rightfully Change Their Name Back to ‘The Redskins.’”

The letter blasted the team for engaging in “cancel culture” by dumping its more than 90-year-old name and said that by getting rid of the name, they are eradicating Native American culture. The group says it aims to highlight the “steadfast role [of Native Americans] in American history….”

“At this moment in history, we are formally requesting that the team revitalize its relationship with the American Indian community by (i) changing the name back to ‘The Redskins’ which recognizes America’s original inhabitants and (ii) using the team’s historic name and legacy to encourage Americans to learn about, not cancel, the history of America’s tribes and our role in the founding of this Great Nation,” the letter said.

“Should we need to encourage a national boycott similar to what happened with Anheuser Busch (Bud Light) which is now down $27 billion (note, not one brick thrown, not one highway blocked, not one bridge burned) — WE WILL DO JUST THAT,” the letter continued [embedded in tweet below].

In 2020, the Washington football “team announced [tweet below] it was removing Redskins from its name and two years later announced the national professional football team would be called the Washington Commanders,” writes the Daily Wire, providing some background.

“The name change came about from pressure from the cancel culture mob following the death of George Floyd and those who claimed that the term was racist and offensive to Native Americans,” the site continues.

In reality, this controversy was another good example of the pseudo-elite vs. the street; this was evidenced by John Q. Public’s response, too. As an example, “I am Native and I completely disagree,” complained one Twitter user at the time. “I dislike whats happening with this cancel culture and ‘political correctness.’”

This anecdote does reflect the wider reality, too. In fact, a 2016 poll by the liberal Washington Post found that 90 percent of American Indians took no offense at the Redskins name. And why would they? After all, “There are Native American schools that call their teams Redskins,” NBC4 Washington reported in 2013. “The term is [also] used affectionately by some natives, similar to the way the N-word is used by some African-Americans.”

But none of this matters because, the white left-wing wokesters apparently believe, non-whites are too stupid to know when they’re being insulted. So Mizz Paleface Ethnic-studies Professor with the newfangled pronouns will just clue you in, Tonto.

This didn’t escape X users under NAGA’s tweet, either. To wit:

“Well, that is awkward,” wrote “Nathan Thompson.” “The virtue signaling white liberals argued the [Redskins] name is racist.”

“I’d rather white people grow a pair and stop renaming things because of other white peoples feelings,” opined a tweeter identifying himself as American Indian.

Another respondent wrote simply, “White liberals know what’s best for you.”

Then, after averring that the “Leftist White Saviors” would attack NAGA over their off-the-PC-reservation behavior, “KenWNichols” amusingly summed up the former’s attitude thus:

“The only good Injun is a Woke Injun.”

Speaking of levity, comedian-cum-commentator Bill Maher addressed the white-savior phenomenon in 2019, saying, “White liberals have to start listening to me when I tell them, ‘You can’t be more offended than the victim.’” (Video below. Warning: No guarantee of sanity beyond the two-minute mark.)

An irony here is that I’d been noting for years that leftists, being like rebellious children who revolt against whatever their parents stand for, would’ve also been upset if Indian names and symbols had been absent from America. Then they’d say, “Why, these people were here before us and you act as if they don’t even exist!” And, of course, this now is essentially NAGA’s complaint.

Unfortunately, none of this is a laughing matter. What’s being witnessed in the pseudo-elite vs. street conflict is that, just as our government increasingly represents fringe special interests and not the people, the same is true of the market. Because the culture shapers — media, academia, entertainment, Big Tech, and corporate America — act monolithically in magnifying fringe voices and censoring the already mostly silent majority, the “invisible hand” of the market is overshadowed by radicals made to seem large.

The irony is that, in what truly matters, they’re the smallest people among us.