Name Changing: Washington Redskins and Kansas City Chiefs

 
July 23, 2020

Effective immediately, Washington will call itself the “Washington Football Team”, pending adoption of a new name. This is not a final renaming and rebranding for team; this is the name it wants to use until pending adoption of a new name in the future.

July 14, 2020: This week the Washington Redskins announced that they would be retiring their nickname and logo after completing a thorough review that began on July 3.

An earlier post here about how team names change as the team moves from city to city ended with a mention of the football Washington Redskins. Their name and logo have been controversial for a long time and particularly in the past few years there has been greater public outcry to change them. 

The logo that was controversial and that has been retired

The Washington Redskins name controversy involves the name and the logo of the team. Native American individuals, tribes, and organizations have been questioning the use of the name and image for decades. Over 115 professional organizations representing civil rights, educational, athletic, and scientific experts have published resolutions or policies that state that the use of Native American names and/or symbols by non-native sports teams is a harmful form of ethnic stereotyping that promotes misunderstanding and prejudice which contributes to other problems faced by Native Americans.

The Washington Redskins team is only one example of the larger controversy, but it receives the most public attention due to the name itself being defined as derogatory or insulting in modern dictionaries and the prominence of the team representing the nation's capital.

a "less controversial" script logo used by the Redskins (1972–2019) Sportslogos.net, Public Domain

When an NFL franchise was bought for Boston in 1933, the team was set to play at the home of the baseball Boston Braves so it adopted the same name. The following year, the Braves moved to Fenway Park and changed their name to the Redskins. The Redskins name traveled with the team to become the Washington Redskins. Of course, the baseball Atlanta Braves, also use American Indian imagery - and a pretty tasteless "chop" motion in the stands by fans.

It is just a matter of time before the same pressure is put to bear on other teams, such as the NFL's  Kansas City Chiefs who also use Native American imagery in its logo of an Indian arrowhead. 

The team was supposedly named in honor of Kansas City mayor Harold Roe Bartle who was instrumental in bringing the AFL Dallas Texans to Kansas City, MO in 1963. Bartel earned his nickname as the founder of a Boy Scouts honor camping society Tribe of Mic-O-Say in which he was "Chief" Lone Bear. But their logo doesn't seem to represent that origin story.

In 1989 the Chiefs switched from Warpaint, a Pinto horse ridden by a man in a feathered headdress, to their current mascot K. C. Wolf. A horse named Warpaint returned in 2009 but is ridden by a cheerleader.