Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_REFERER in /home/stparch/public_html/headmid_temp_main.php on line 4394
Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
July 9, 2020     Shelton Mason County Journal
PAGE 38     (38 of 40 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
 
PAGE 38     (38 of 40 available)        PREVIOUS     NEXT      Jumbo Image    Save To Scrapbook    Set Notifiers    PDF    JPG
July 9, 2020
 
Newspaper Archive of Shelton Mason County Journal produced by SmallTownPapers, Inc.
Website © 2025. All content copyrighted. Copyright Information
Terms Of Use | Privacy Policy | Request Content Removal | About / FAQ | Get Acrobat Reader




Page A-38 Shelton-Mason County Journal Thursday, July 9, 2020 CITY OF SHELTON ADULT RECREATION SOFTBALL L ' k f r pl Wasted Talent’s Joel Thompson watches the infield action after making a catch in right fieldMonday at Callanan Park in Shelton during a City of Shelton adult coed recreational softball league game. See-more photos from the first day of league play on A-10 and 1 1. Journal photo Justin Johnson ‘ FAB POST Time far a name change in D.C. New York City carried as its mascot a derogatory term for Black people. Or, what if a team in Los Angeles used a racial epithet for Latino people as its mascot. It wouldn’t happen. So why does the National Football League allow the Washington, D.C., franchise that plays in Landover, Maryland, to continue to use a derogatory reference to Native Americans? It’s time for a change. Since the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in late May sparked protests and rallies from coast to ceast, many Americans are beginning to have eye-opening conversa- tions with people of color about the chal- lenges they face. The debate about the disparaging slang term that Washington identifies Imagine for a moment if a professional sports team in By JUSTIN . JOHNSON as its mascot is not a new one. It’s gone on for years, dating back to lawsuits filed in 1992. In 2014, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office voted to cancel six trademarks held by the team, determining thattheterm was disparaging to a substantial number of Native Ameri- cans. Before the case was appealed, the US. Supreme Court ruled in 2017 in a similar issue that trademarks are pri- vate, not government speech, and that the clause of the Lanham Act which prohibited registration of trademarks‘ that may disparage persons, institutions, beliefs or national symbols -— violated the First Amendment. ’ Legally speaking, there is no mechanism to make the Washington, D.C., team change its name, but with height- ened attention to social issues, many of the team’s key /*‘-""" sponsors have requested the team change its mange-("Mi That includes FedEx, which has the naming rights to the team’s home stadium, PepsiCo, Nike and Bank of America, according to Associated Press reporting. , President Donald Trump predictably tweeted about the issue, claiming that the name of Washington’s NFL team and Cleveland’s MLB team was named “out of STRENGTH, not weakness,” before calling it politically correct and at- tempting to disparage US. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Let’s be clear, this change is overdue. For both Washing- ton and Cleveland. Nothing is positive about using a word that is defined in the dictionary as offensive. This isn’t the University of Utah Utes or the Florida State University Seminoles,- both major university athletic departments that have the backing of regional tribes in their respective areas. ‘ The Associated Press reported Monday that more than a dozen Native American leaders and organizations sent a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell calling for the league to force Washington owner Dan Snyder to change the name immediately. ‘ Snyder last week committed to a “review” process re- garding the team’s name, but has refused to consider changing the team’s name multiple times since buying it in . 1999. Crystal Echo Hawk, founder of the nonprofit organiza- tion IllumiNative, which seeks to “increase the visibility of and challenge the negative narrative about — Native nations and peoples in American society,” according to its . website, told The Associated Press last month that, “We’ve never been faced with a greater opportunity and moment for this to finally happen.” “Native Americans have been working and fighting on this issue for decades, decades and decades, andl think really talking with different Native leaders'around the country, this is the moment. There’s really no excuse now for this Washington team and for the NFL to do the right. thing.” V . I couldn’t have said it better myself. I Justin Johnson is the Sports Outdoors Editor for the Shelton-Mason County Journal. He can be reached by email at justin@masoncounty.com.