On Monday, Redskins owner Daniel Snyder launched a foundation aimed at providing aid and assistance to Native Americans. On Tuesday, the Native American group most loudly opposing the team’s name responded.
“We’re glad that after a decade of owning the Washington team, Mr. Snyder is finally interested in Native American heritage, and we are hopeful that when his team finally stands on the right side of history and changes its name, he will honor the commitments to Native Americans that he is making,” Oneida Indian Nation representative Ray Halbritter said in a press release.
“We are also hopeful that in his new initiative to honor Native Americans’ struggle, Mr. Snyder makes sure people do not forget that he and his predecessor George Preston Marshall, a famous segregationist, have made our people’s lives so much more difficult by using a racial slur as the Washington team’s name.”
Snyder’s gesture will do little to change the minds of those who firmly have decided that they are for or against the continued use of the team’s name. His target audience presumably resides in the middle, where folks either don’t have an opinion on the team’s name or haven’t adopted the opinion so strongly that change is unlikely.