What? It's an honest question! The way things are today, I really am surprised they haven't changed the name of that day. I know....it sound stupid. But it's also something that you would expect to be forced to change in today's world. Hell, they don't want us calling a football team Red Skins even though that's what it's been called forever....nobody complained before. If you mention the word "black" in just about anything, someone is bound to call it racist....Lol! So, when will we be forced to change Black Friday to something more 'appropriate'?
Allow me to correct you on on another matter..
.nobody complained before...
Yes, many have complained before. I live in the area and I cannot recall a time when someone wasn't offended by the name.
Here is an article from 1972 about the name....
“Redskins/Rednecks,” by Tom Quinn, Washington Daily News, November 1971
Imagine the Syracuse University Orangemen called instead the Syracuse Kikes. The football players have little cash registers painted on the sides of their helmets. When the team wins, the student body stands up and shouts in unison, “Such a Deal!”
Repugnant? Cruel anti-semitism? What, then would be the reaction if, say, for just one game Ole Miss called itself The Darkies and dressed its cheerleaders up like Aunt Jemima shuffling to a Motown version of “Old Black Joe?”
That could be a mockery, eh?
Team nicknames are one of the most casual traditions in American sports. Usually, such names are chosen to add color to competition and most are based on animals or mythical figures like Vikings, Giants, Pirates. Some of the newer names understandably identify with technology: the New York Jets, Baltimore Bullets.
Except in one case that has repeated itself as often as history itself, no one picks on an ethnic minority for his mascot. And that one exception is the American Indian. Right now, in the racially tense 1970s, it seems perfectly acceptable to have teams known as the Bucks, Braves, Chiefs, Indians, Warriors, or, ahem, the Washington Redskins.
“For a lot of Indians, the name ‘Redskin’ is roughly equivalent to ‘Darky,’ explained Richard LaCourse, a Yakima Indian from the state of Washington who is the D.C. correspondent for the American Indian Press Association. “It depends on how it’s used. The worst thing about it, it keeps the cheap stereotypes of the Indian in circulation.”
The term does not particularly bother LaCourse, who, like many Indians interviewed on the subject yesterday, prefers to believe the whiteman simply knows not what he does. John Parker, however, a Choctaw from Oklahoma who works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was indignant. “They should change the name,” he said. “It lacks dignity, a haphazard slang word that refers to Indians in general but on a lower scale. It is the white people’s way of making a mockery, like they used to do to the blacks in the South.”...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...06/03/the-great-redskins-name-debate-of-1972/
