Death of a Social Justice Warrior Crusade: 90 Percent of Native Americans Not Offended By Redskins Name

A poll for the Washington Post finds that 90 percent of Native Americans are not offended by the name of the Washington Redskins football team.

Thus ends the great Social Justice Warrior crusade of yesterday. Before liberals began absurdly touting transgender bathroom access as the equivalent of the civil-rights movement, they were convinced the Republic would fall, if the Redskins didn’t change the team name immediately.

The amount of pressure brought to bear by these crusaders was staggering. Friendly media outlets pitched in to create an atmosphere of crisis, in which Redskins owner Daniel Snyder was portrayed as a racist super-villain. His very humanity was questioned over his supposedly incomprehensible refusal to rename the team.

Celebrities weighed in against Snyder, including Celebrity-in-Chief Barack Obama. Fiery editorials ripped loose from liberal papers across the land. Legal actions were taken. Buffoonish sportswriters virtue-signaled like mad, by refusing to speak or write the Redskins name. The menace of international terrorism faded beside the existential crisis of this football team’s name.

The one thing our beloved liberal media was very, very, very careful not to do was take a poll of what actual Native Americans thought. The only extant survey on the subject was over a decade old, and Snyder was mocked for pointing to its finding of overwhelming support for the Redskins name. Mysteriously, our poll-addicted media refused to conduct another survey for years, even though they’ll poll anyone else about anything else at the drop of a hat.

Now that the extreme Left has moved on to giving men unfettered access to women’s bathrooms as the white-hot moral crisis of the hour, the Redskins crusade is utterly forgotten, so it’s safe to take a poll… and what do you know? Actual Native Americans are still 90 percent untroubled by the team name, just like Snyder claimed.

He wasn’t given much credit for sitting down with Native Americans and asking them what they thought, or even for launching a foundation to benefit the tribes, but he was right all along. While self-appointed left-wing moral crusaders sneered at the Redskins owner as a hapless boob trying to pay off his white guilt with charitable donations, actual Native Americans appreciated his respectful interest.

“Across every demographic group, the vast majority of Native Americans say the team’s name does not offend them, including 80 percent who identify as politically liberal, 85 percent of college graduates, 90 percent of those enrolled in a tribe, 90 percent of non-football fans and 91 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 39. Even 9 in 10 of those who have heard a great deal about the controversy say they are not bothered by the name,” the Post reports.

This poll is an absolute disaster for snotty activists. Not only were the vast majority of respondents untroubled by the team name, or by the general use of Native American imagery in sports, but 80% of them said they would not be offended if someone called them a “redskin” personally.

Disappointingly, the Post doesn’t seem to have computed a polling percentage on Native Americans who affirmatively support the Redskins name and see it as a positive gesture of respect, but they do quote Chippewa teacher Barbara Bruce declaring, “I’m proud of being Native American and of the Redskins. I’m not ashamed of that at all. I like that name.”

Will this ostensibly stunning poll result force liberals to rethink their social-justice agenda, reconsider their arrogance in presuming to speak for designated “victim” groups… or at least accept that nobody names multi-million-dollar sports franchises after people, animals, or objects they disdain?

Don’t count on it. Even though no one seems able to pummel a poll into disgorging more than 28% support among non-Native Americans for changing the Redskins name, the Left will never admit they were wrong about this.

The Post even pre-spins its own poll by dismissing as mere “political cover for District leaders to welcome Snyder’s club as it is,” and handing dejected activists a ready-made storyline to meditate upon while they retreat to their safe spaces:

Activists, however, dismiss the billionaire’s insistence that the name is intended to honor Native Americans. They argue that he must act if even a small minority of Indians are insulted by the term – a dictionary-defined slur. They have also maintained that opinions have evolved as his unyielding stance has been subjected to a barrage of condemnation by critics ranging from ‘South Park’ to the United Church of Christ.

Hang in there, kids! 70 percent of America and 90 percent of Native Americans think your movement is an annoying waste of time and money, but if you keep pushing, the overwhelming majority can be browbeaten into submission before your righteous fury!

Let us give the last word to Judy Ann Joyner of New York, whose grandmother was part Shawnee and part Wyandot: “It’s 100 people okay with the situation, and one person has a problem with it, and all of a sudden everyone has to conform. You’ll find people who don’t like puppies and kittens and Santa Claus. It doesn’t mean we’re going to wipe them off the face of the earth.”

The Post article says that Joyner is a 64-year-old retired nurse. Is there any chance we could persuade her to come out of retirement and reform the federal civil-rights bureaucracy, or maybe put her in charge of every university in America for a few years?