Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Sports Nickname Controversy: Why The Shitlib Argument about Teams Not Being Named Jews or Chinaman is Stupid.

On a comment feed about the changing of the Cleveland Indians name to Guaradians, a supporter of the name change posted a meme with imagined logos of teams nicknamed Jews and Chinamen. I also have heard the comedian Bill Burr make a similar argument. His argument was that nicknaming the Redskins the Redskins was akin to say Nazis having sport teams nicknamed after Jews. I will concede that these are points that need to be refuted by those who think the name changes of the Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins and Edmonton Eskimos are unnecessary and stupid.


So here it goes.


Back in the day, the nicknamers of sport teams thought that the native peoples of North America had qualities that sports teams wished to have: the fighting and battling spirit, the cool warrior aesthetic, and physical abilities. So the nicknames were a tribute. If back in the day, the nicknamers had thought that Chinamen and Jews had qualities as people that were worthy of athlethic success, they would surely have used such nicknames. But they didn't because they didn't perceive Jews and Chinamen as having athlethic process. 


Nazis would conceivably never have nicknamed a team after Jews because they didn't think that Jews had anything good about them.


If anything, shitlibs should be making the point that not using the nicknames Jews and Chinamen is discrimination against Jews and Chinese in favour of native peoples. But they don't because they think, in a backward retrogressive way, that anything who is not white and is nicknamed by a sports team must surely be the victim of some sort of bigotry.


A few other points:

  • If back in the day the nicknames Jews and Chinamen had been adopted, the words would have taken on different conotations that it seems they have for shitlibs. Redskins and Dodgers have/had taken on the meaning of a sports team nicknames.

  • No one would nickname their teams Shitlibs and Liberals because stupidity is not a quality that help teams achieve things athlethically.

  • Many North American sports are named after ancient Greek peoples like the Spartans and the Argonauts. Why isn't that offensive if the Indian nicknames are? 

  • Native North American imagery is something to behold and makes for great sports uniforms. For example, look at the Chicago Black Hawk uniforms.


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