“Contrary to polls showing that relatively few Native Americans take offense at the Washington Redskins’ name, a new UC Berkeley study has found that at least half of more than 1,000 Native Americans surveyed are offended by the football team’s 87-year-old moniker and Native mascots in general,” writes Yasmin Anwar of the Berkeley News.
The study, which will be published this month in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, shows that the degree to which respondents identify as Native American influences the extent to which they find the term offensive. Specifically, the study found that 57 percent of those who “strongly identify with being Native American” and 67 percent of those “who frequently engage in tribal cultural practices” are “deeply insulted by caricatures of Native American culture.”
In 2016 The Washington Post had a poll that said 90% of Native Americans were not offended by the nickname “Redskins”. In 2019 in another Washington Post poll, the most common reaction by Native Americans about the nickname Redskins was “Proud”.
