Change the Mascot's anti-R*dsk*ns protest at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
The Federal Communications Commission audio division
rejected a
petition Thursday asking it not to renew the license of WWXX radio station for using "R*dsk*ns" in its broadcasts. The station is owned by Dan Synder, who is also owner of the Washington football team whose "R*dsk*ns" name has prompted many Indians and their allies to protest and take legal action without success over several decades.
The FCC petition was filed in September. It said the word should not be broadcast because it is a racial slur and indecent, and violates the FCC standards on obscenity and hate speech. No different according to petitioner John Banzhaf III than "broadcasting words like N*gg*rs, Sp*cs, W*tb*acks, Ch*nks, K*kes, C*nts, F*gs, etc. even as the name of a team or musical group," something the commission would, he said, never countenance. Banzhaf noted that the broadcasting of the name has “an adverse impact on impressionable young Indian as well as non-Indian children" and is “hate speech” that “keep[s] alive the spirit of inhumanity, subjugation and genocide.”
But the commissioners did choose to countenance "R*dsk*ns":
The FCC determined that the law defines profanity as sexual or excretory in nature, so it cannot find the word “Redskins” profane.
“We find that there have been no serious violations of the [Communications] Act or the rules involving the station or any other violations that, taken together, would constitute a pattern of abuse,” wrote Peter H. Doyle, chief of the Media Bureau’s audio division.
Three Indian groups still have active petitions with the FCC attacking the use of the name. In June the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a
a ruling in the case of
Blackhorse v. Pro-Football Inc. canceling the team's trademark registrations for being “disparaging to Native Americans.” That case is being appealed.
One frequent critique of those who object to the name is that it's merely the latest campaign by "self-righteous" white progressives and most Indians don't care. In fact, the oldest pan-Indian organization in the country, the National Congress of American Indians, has opposed the use of "R*dsk*ns" for team names since 1968. The militant American Indian Movement has opposed it since 1979.
There's more about this below the orange frybread.
James Fenelon, a Lakota/Dakota (Sioux) enrolled at the Standing Rock reservation in North and South Dakota, is a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Indigenous Peoples Studies at CSUSB. His survey earlier this year of people he verified to actually be Indian found 67 percent felt the team name is racist.
Snyder has repeatedly made clear that he will not change the team's name and argued that it's meant to honor Indians. Most of us don't feel honored. We feel trashed. The same way that blacks would feel trashed if there were a team called the "Nashville N*gg*rs" or Jews would feel about the "Kalamazoo K*kes." The inability of so many people to see the parallels speaks once again to one of the key problems American Indians face. Except as stereotypes—most of them negative—we are invisible to most Americans.
Is dumping the "R*dsk*ns' name the most important priority for American Indians, as many critics of the protests have sneered? Of course not. We've been long aware of the problems Indians face before non-Indians condescended to inform us of them as part of the campaign to convince us and other people that the name is no big deal. But those other problems don't change the fact that the continued use of this racist slur matters. That it wounds us and pisses us off and continues a 500-year history in which Indians are talked at instead of listened to.