Seventeen posts and everybody says "skins" or "skinz". Getting PC on us?
9:21 AM 10/27/2014
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A comprehensive review from 2013 shows that the United States is home to 62 high schools that have the Redskins as their athletic mascot. The majority of the students at three of those schools � or about five percent of them � are Native American.
The Washington Post sent an intrepid reporter briefly beyond the Beltway to find out what could possibly motivate students, parents, coaches and school officials at one of the schools: Red Mesa High School in the rural, isolated corner of northeastern Arizona.
Turns out it�s simple: They like their mascot just fine.
�I don�t find it derogatory,� school district superintendent Tommie Yazzie told the Post. �It�s a source of pride.�
Red Mesa student council president Mckenzie Lameman agreed.
�It�s not a racist slur if it originates from a Native American tribe,� the junior told the paper. �It�s always used in the context of sports.�
At a recent Red Mesa Redskins football, game, the Post reporter found dedicated parents stamping the bleachers and signs in the raucous, festive crowd reading �Redskin Nation� and �Fear the Spear.�
�There�s more important things to worry about than �Redskins,�� senior football player Arlo Begay told the Post.
Almost 90 percent of the students and over 70 percent of the teachers at Red Mesa favor keeping the Redskins mascot, according to a survey completed this month.
A 2004 poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center poll concurs with this sentiment. That survey found that the Redskins name does not offend 90 percent of all actual Native Americans in the United States.
The feelings of the actual Navajo Nation members or actual Native Americans in general has done nothing to stop a very small but very dedicated group of deeply offended activists from lobbying the Washington Redskins football team to change its mascot or trying to force a name change through federal coercion.
�This protest feels like it�s coming from one person,� Red Mesa athletic director Al Begay told the Post.
