#NotYourRedskin: On MLK Day, the Fritz Pollard Alliance Takes Snyder to the Woodshed. In Public.

Image copyright Fritz Pollard Alliance; all rights reserved.

After another sleepless night, I got some early good news in the fight against redface on this observed day of commemoration of the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Wings himself brought this story to my attention, having gotten it as an online news alert.

The Fritz Pollard Alliance has (quite deliberately) chosen this day to take a very public stand and make a very public statement in opposition to the Washington Reds***s team name and mascot. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the Fritz Pollard Alliance Foundation, it's a civil rights group that works to promote diversity in the National Football League. Specifically, per the group's Web site:

We promote diversity and equality of job opportunity in the coaching, front office and scouting staffs of National Football League ("NFL") teams.

The group of former members of the NFL family and associated activists who would eventually coalesce into the Fritz Pollard Alliance are the ones who midwifed the "Rooney Rule," requiring interviewing and consideration of candidates of color for all head coaching hires. That rule went into effect at the end of October, 2002, and less than six months later, the FPA was born. In the more than a decade since, It has worked tirelessly to improve diversity in the coaching and managerial ranks of the NFL.

Today, FPA Chair John Wooten, Executive Director Harry Carson, and Co-Counsel Cyrus Mehri and N. Jeremi Duru have taken an extraordinary step on behalf of Native Americans, fans and otherwise, across Indian Country.

Leaders of the Fritz Pollard Alliance — an influential nonprofit group that was instrumental in forcing the league to revise its minority-hiring practices — said they tried to discuss the issue with Snyder at an intense August meeting. Instead, they said, they were shouted down by the executive director of the foundation he created to help Native Americans.

The alliance, which is headed by former players, also told The Washington Post that, at a pair of annual gatherings, they voiced concerns about the moniker to NFL leadership — including once to Commissioner Roger Goodell — but were told it was a matter only the team could address.

At a dead end, alliance leaders have taken their opposition public on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for maximum impact. The group has a history of spurring substantial change in the NFL, making the proclamation among the most significant victories for opponents of the name.

FPA Chair John Wooten was nothing if not blunt in his letter:

“As the NFL continues to move in the direction of respect and dignity, one of its teams carrying this name cuts glaringly against the grain,” read a letter co-signed by the group’s chairman, John Wooten, a Redskins lineman in the late 1960s. “It hurts the League and it hurts us all.”

The letter was also signed by Fritz Pollard Executive Director Harry Carson, a Hall of Fame linebacker for the New York Giants.

Of course, team spokeshill Tony Wyllie is seeking refuge in the organization's usual "play the victim" stance, pronouncing himself "dismayed" and feigning an inability to understand. FPA counsel N. Jeremi Duru, who is the author of Advancing the Ball: Race, Reformation, and the Quest for Equal Coaching Opportunity in the NFL, dispenses with that nonsense fast and thoroughly:

“There seemed to be an argument on the [team] side that it wasn’t reasonable to be offended by the use of the word,” Duru said. “My research found that it was quite reasonable to be offended by its use.”

Exactly.

Duru's co-counsel piled on more reality:

“You can’t move forward as a league talking about respect and dignity if you have one club going the opposite direction,” said Mehri, one of the alliance’s lawyers. “I made the point that this is bad for the league, and Jeremi made the point that Native Americans have a legitimate argument.”

FPA officials tried having a civil and reasoned discussion at the team training camp, in a meeting with a group that included Snyder himself, team president Bruce Allen, and OAF executive director and token "Original American" Gary Edwards. Snyder and his minions, of course, have reacted entirely predictably. Which is to say, thrown a tantrum the likes of which would shame the average two-year-old.

After Wooten told the team they had come as friends, Mehri said he started his pitch — then the meeting rapidly deteriorated. 

“Every time we tried to speak, this guy Gary Edwards exploded,” said Mehri, who has also worked an NFL consultant. 

“It was really hostile. And it was jarring, because it was so out of place.”

When Carson brought up the issue, Edwards fired back, asking what Carson, who is African American, would want to be called. 

“I want to be called a man,” Carson recalled saying. 

Edwards, a Cherokee and retired deputy assistant director of the Secret Service, was so disruptive that Fritz Pollard officials said they never had the chance to ask Snyder if he would meet with activists. 

“At some point, we just gave up talking,” Mehri said. “It was clear they were not in a frame of mind to even hear the words we were saying.”

This is simply more evidence that nothing Snyder and his people do is done in good faith. It's all about maintaining iron control over their right to be racist. Because they want to, and like a bunch of two-year-olds, they will not be denied.

Edwards is particularly troubling. He already has a reputation around Indian Country of behaving like a ringer and a plant, like the worst of the sell-outs from the bad old days of COINTELPRO, the kind of hired goon that would have been comfortable in the company of Dickie Wilson. His behavior since taking on this particular role as official Cavalry Indian scout for a white-owned billion-dollar corporate enterprise has been nothing short of shameful. Aside from the fact that he is engaging in destructive racism against his own for the benefit of the dominant culture, he is an embarrassment to this rest of us. Shouting people down, demanding to know what Black men "want to be called," insinuating that they secretly prefer racial slurs? This is not our way.

Mr. Wooten isn't having any.

“We have to take a stand. That name has to be changed. We can’t just leave it up to [the team]. We think it’s disrespectful. We think it’s, by definition, demeaning,” Wooten said. “I truly believe all sides, including the Native American groups who don’t feel the name needs to be changed, they all need to be there, and they should all sit and discuss this. That hasn’t happened. I truly believe that has to happen.”

It is disrespectful. It is, by definition, demeaning. It is destructive. It is racist. And it does need to be changed.

So many profound thanks are owed to the Fritz Pollard Alliance and its officials, for their courage and their willingness to stand with us as outspoken allies.

And to Snyder, Allen, Wyllie, and Edwards, on this day, when we activists of color and allies all over the country and the world celebrate the life of a man whose shoes you are not fit to shine, let this be fair warning:

The name will change. With or without you. Because we are #NotYourMascots, and we are sure as hell #NotYourRedskins.

  

Except as otherwise indicated, all content copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.