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Controversial Mascot Names in the News - USPTO Takes a Stand - Printable Version

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Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - yvonne - 06-20-2014

I'm not sure rastaman is asking the question you're answering, BC. He asks why "it was OK," which I'm rightly or wrongly interpreting to mean why is it morally or socially acceptable, not why it's legally acceptable.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - fullmetal - 06-20-2014

Free speech for the advancement of ideas in the marketplace of ideas is fine.  Free speech on, say, high school grounds, has not been a carte blanche for pro-drug use clothing, for example.  I don't think Mr. Snyder's team name is a good use of free speech at all.  I think, if it were ever to be brought before them, the SCOTUS would agree.  And if you don't think the the use of the name leads to disparaging remarks, perhaps you've had the good fortune to avoid hearing the chants and epithets employed by fans of opposing teams who play against Mr. Snyder's football team.

The extremely unique historical origin and cultural context of Mr. Snyder's team name makes it downright unlikely that such a ruling would lead to a slippery slope wherein the word "nerd" would be regulated.  And those who keep saying that "surveys show" that Native Americans don't mind the name surely are ignoring the surveys and personal anecdotes that show that Native Americans by and large *do* take offense to the name.  (Also, I'm not sure how the question(s) were worded in some surveys, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were worded one way only to have the results interpreted another way.  Applies to all surveys.)



Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - BostonCard - 06-20-2014

(06-20-2014, 10:36 PM)Yvonne link Wrote:I'm not sure rastaman is asking the question you're answering, BC. He asks why "it was OK," which I'm rightly or wrongly interpreting to mean why is it morally or socially acceptable, not why it's legally acceptable.

I think it is both.  Our Constitutional protections rely on us defending things we object to.  Unless his question is specifically why are people supporting the nickname itself, in which case I have no answer.  As I said, I personally find it offensive.

BC

Relax Martyup - jacketree - 06-21-2014

"Nerds" is already trademarked.

[Image: C089084.png]

I find the slippery slope argument specious. Seems to me the USPTO is just doing its job.  He's welcome to appeal. Or rot in hell as far as I'm concerned.

Definition of REDSKIN

usually offensive
:  american indian
See redskin defined for English-language learners »

Learner's definition of REDSKIN
[count] informal + offensive
: native american
◊ The word redskin is very offensive and should be avoided.

First Known Use of REDSKIN: 1699

Way to stay current Dan Snyder. Dick.



Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - 82 Card - 06-21-2014

Trademark problem closer to home: "Nerd Nation" is already trademarked:
http://media.zibb.com/trademark/nerd+nation/30092019

Primary industry is television show distribution. Related industries are listed as education and entertainment.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - oman - 06-21-2014

(06-20-2014, 10:05 PM)Boston Card link Wrote:That being said, unlike a right to free speech, there is no constitutional right to trademark protection. The government is not obligated to provide trademark protection, except in accordance with the US code (which I cited, and which specifically says that offensive trademarks are disallowed, as are other categories, for example geographic trademarks regions Champaign). Trademarks exist primarily for the benefit of the consumer, not the benefit of the mark owner.  From the wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Other_aspects): "Trademark law is designed to fulfill the public policy objective of consumer protection, by preventing the public from being misled as to the origin or quality of a product or service. By identifying the commercial source of products and services, trademarks facilitate identification of products and services which meet the expectations of consumers as to quality and other characteristics."

BC

Thanks for your clarity on the subject, BC.  I do need to find some time to read the opinion and figure out where being protected from disparaging remarks fits into the trademark office's fiat.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - fullmetal - 06-21-2014

(06-21-2014, 03:29 AM)82 Card link Wrote:Trademark problem closer to home: "Nerd Nation" is already trademarked:
http://media.zibb.com/trademark/nerd+nation/30092019

Primary industry is television show distribution. Related industries are listed as education and entertainment.

That's fascinating.  I think G4 used to put out tv content related to gaming and associated pursuits...but since the trademarked 'thing' in question is an image file of text, maybe Stanford is safe.  Nerd Nation apparently exists in the copyright database as a screenplay by Regina Glei as well.  My Nerd Nation shirt has a copyright symbol but not a trademark symbol.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - Mick - 06-21-2014

(06-20-2014, 02:21 PM)garvin link Wrote:
Quote:Can't there just be things we think are unacceptable to our society, that our duly elected government makes effort to prevent?

Not if you believe in free speech. And I absolutely do not trust our duly elected government to regulate free speech.

Why not?  They know it when they see it...

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - Mick - 06-21-2014

(06-20-2014, 02:15 PM)Stanford_Cardinals link Wrote:the government is using a tool that is inherently anti-free market to disrupt the free market.




The Chinese absolutely agree with you.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - Mick - 06-21-2014

(06-20-2014, 02:34 PM)GoodGrief link Wrote:Someone on this board (who was it?) put it all in perspective for me regarding Native American team names, whether derogatory or not. He said that if you steal a peoples lands and try to wipe them out entirely, you don't get the right to pay "tribute" to them by making them your mascot. When he posited the idea of a German soccer team named "The Fightin' Jews" that sealed the issue for me.


It's been a few years, but I seem to recall a white paper on human tendencies to venerate their vanquished foes.  There's a guy I know who likes to quote Rommel a lot.  I pointed out that his side lost, but he doesn't stop the admiration.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - BobK - 06-21-2014

Interesting

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lindseyadler/native-americans-offended-by-racial-slur

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - martyup - 06-21-2014

(06-21-2014, 09:28 AM)BobK link Wrote:Interesting

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lindseyadler/native-americans-offended-by-racial-slur

More interesting are the comments to the article.  Here are some of them:

Quote:Hailey Rebecca Dunn ·Â  Top Commenter · SMU
Registered member of the Chickasaw Nation and direct descendant of Levi Colbert, former chief. Not representative of all Native Anericans but representative of myself: not offended. You can record that response in caps.
Reply · Like · 28 · Follow Post · June 4 at 4:20pm

[Max Callahan ·Â  Top Commenter · Fredericksburg, Virginia
Yes you are representative of yourself and you speak for solely yourself. As the article states, 67% of Native Americans disagree with you.
Reply · Like · 2 · June 18 at 10:51am

Hailey Rebecca Dunn ·Â  Top Commenter · SMU
Mike Callahan, the sample size was too small to be considered adequately representative of the thousands of Native Americans in the US. Anyone who has taken high school level stats can see that. Furthermore, the organization who conducted the survey was an indigenous peoples organization. This could definitely have led to survey bias. Your assertion that 67% of NA's disagree with me is premature and factually flawed if this is all you have to go on. By the way, I also represent my family whodoesnt care.
Reply · Like · 9 · June 18 at 11:06am

Dennis Tester ·Â  Top Commenter
I'm a Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux and I don't find it offensive. What I find offensive is white people telling me what should offend me. White people: "Oh, you're not offended? That's ok, we'll be offended for you."
Reply · Like · 20 · Follow Post · June 7 at 7:30am

Max Callahan ·Â  Top Commenter · Fredericksburg, Virginia
All one 1/64s of your Sioux heritage is really shining in this comment.
Reply · Like · June 18 at 4:50pm

Jay Peter ·Â  Top Commenter
Max Callahan As opposed to all 100% of your white guilt?
Reply · Like · 4 · June 18 at 4:52pm

Max Callahan ·Â  Top Commenter · Fredericksburg, Virginia
Jay Peter Wasn't it Hitler who said repeat a lie many times and it becomes the truth?
Reply · Like · June 18 at 4:53pm"

Eugene Redshirt Jr.
I am not offended by the name of this team. Why should I be offended by such when the govt violated the 1868 treaty they made with the Lakota. I am Oglala from Pine Ridge and what offends me more is seeing Cherokees wearing war bonnets and erecting tipi's as if it was their culture. What offends me is seeing other tribes who are not part of our Plains culture disrespecting our likeness. I was up in Cherokee, North Carolina and I was pissed off at the sight of seeing a Cherokee wearing a war bonnet as if it was his right to wear such an honor. I am offended when I see other Non-Plains people erecting tipi's and literally playing to the hollywood indian stereotype that is what offends me. One question I have is this? All these people making this an issue how many of them know their culture, who among them know their ancestral traditions that should be more of an issue not The Redskins.
Reply · Like · 16 · Follow Post · June 4 at 8:39pm

Dennis Asbury Fleming ·Â  Top Commenter
Best response yet !
Reply · Like · June 18 at 3:45pm

Max Callahan ·Â  Top Commenter · Fredericksburg, Virginia
Ah divide and conquer. The oldest colonial trick in the book.
Reply · Like · June 18 at 5:08pm

Shawn Arneson · ·Â  Top Commenter · WI Indianhead
Max Callahan Right out of the Marx playbook, isn't it? All I see here is people trying to tell other people how offended they should be. This country is completely fucked.
Reply · Like · 1 · June 19 at 7:16am"

Chris Gogoel · James Madison University
For some context this study encapsulated about 100 Native Americans from the CSUSB regional area per Professor Fenelon and his report. If you're still looking for a reputable nationwide study about the opinions of Native Americans, this study falls far short.
Reply · Like · 7 · Follow Post · Edited · June 11 at 2:38pm

DISCIPLEofMrMET
about 2 weeks ago
I feel ashamed that I live in a world full of crybabies. Everybody us offended by some stupid word. If you’re truly offended by words ( ANY words ) you need to grow up and get a life.


Re: Saving Native Americans from Shame, Gov't Style - CornFed - 06-21-2014

I have great respect for the power of statistical analysis.  But two separate studies (granted, quite a number of years apart) linked by Garvin and BobK give nearly opposite impressions.  Clearly, the issue of how Native-Americans are, in general, affected by the Redskins name can not be resolved until one has much greater detail about the methodology used in each study, or until a new, more rigorous survey is conducted.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - pauloalto - 06-21-2014

(06-20-2014, 02:50 PM)garvin link Wrote:Even ignoring the fact that the NFL has free agency for franchises -- that another owner can pull up stakes and move to Washington if he thinks it would be profitable -- that's a very narrow definition of competition, much like saying Stanford football has no competition because it's the only college football team in Palo Alto.

The Redskins compete for fans' entertainment time and dollars with all kinds of things: movies, DVDs, college football teams, NBA basketball, YouTube, TV, books, pizza, NFL Sunday Ticket. There used to be a USFL team in Washington, and it captured approximately zero percent of the Redskins' market share. That suggests to me that the issue of the team name is not really a very important one to most of its fans.

I'm also not sure the NFL is a cartel. It does not control the supply of football, which exists in many different forms and brands. It controls the supply of NFL football, but if that's a cartel, then so is McDonald's, because it controls the supply of McDonald's hamburgers.

Actually, the NFL was found guilty of violating anti-monopoly laws in the 1986 lawsuit by the USFL.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - 81alum - 06-21-2014

(06-21-2014, 10:12 AM)martyup link Wrote:More interesting are the comments to the article.  Here are some of them:

Mike Callahan, the sample size was too small to be considered adequately representative of the thousands of Native Americans in the US. Anyone who has taken high school level stats can see that. Furthermore, the organization who conducted the survey was an indigenous peoples organization. This could definitely have led to survey bias. Your assertion that 67% of NA's disagree with me is premature and factually flawed if this is all you have to go on. By the way, I also represent my family who doesnt care.
This comment in particular was ludicrous. 

The total survey was 400 people, which is in fact the standard survey size for a 95% level of confidence and a 5% margin of error.  This is the normal size poll for most political campaigns, for example.

It is true that of the 400, just 98 were verified Native Americans.  This is actually a very robust result and constitutes a brobdingnagian level of "oversampling" to improve the reliability of the sub sample.  It is common in national polls to represent the opinions of minority groups gathered randomly from within a 400 person sample and not to conduct oversampling at all.  If this had been done in this survey there may have been around 12 Native American responses instead of the 98.

Now, if we used the sample of 98 by itself as a separate survey, the reliability would decrease some.  A survey based on 98 does not attain a 5% margin of error, but it does attain a 10% margin of error.  So it might be that a mere 57% of Native Americans find the name offensive, or perhaps it is more like 77%.  While the margin for error increases, it does not invalidate the results.

Particularly bizarre in that comment was the assertion that the survey was biased because it was conducted by "an indigenous peoples organization." Well, the "organization" was a sanctioned research unit of CSU San Bernardino that focuses on indigenous peoples.  Professor Fenelon and most of his team happen to be Native Americans.  Is the commentator asserting that Native Americans should automatically be regarded as non-objective about the subject of Native American oppression?  And what of the corollary?  Did it occur to the poster that Native Americans might regard surveys conducted by white people to lack objectivity?  We really need to avoid basing our judgment of the quality of social science on the racial identity of the social scientists.  That would rapidly lead us to a repulsive conclusion.

What about the 2002 survey that Garvin and the Redskins cite?  It is entirely possible that this recent survey and the 2002 SI survey are both correct for their times.  Native Americans, like all of us, evolve their thinking about issues over time.  For example, consider how public opinion on gay marriage has changed from 2002 to 2014.

Fenelon's main point, however--both in this survey and those he conducted in Ohio--appears to be that many survey organizations rely exclusively on self-identification to determine if a respondent is Native American or not.  Once the subject of the survey becomes known, respondents could easily exaggerate or even lie about their Native American connections.  His survey apparently used independent verification of Native American identity and this seems to have made a fairly big difference.

Whenever race is a critical element to polling data, you have to expect difficulties like this.  Remember all the political surveys decades before Obama that wildly exaggerated the support for candidates like Tom Bradley or for Doug Wilder.  In those days the surveys proved to be wildly inaccurate because respondents lied about their own race or about their attitudes.  Once race gets highly charged--as it obviously is on the Redskins issue today-- it adds difficulty to conducting accurate surveys, and Fenelon seems to have taken several measures to overcome those difficulties.

Re: Saving Native Americans from Shame, Gov't Style - Bruce Wang - 06-21-2014

This discussion is entirely too civil and nuanced for something so racially-charged.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - martyup - 06-21-2014

(06-21-2014, 11:18 AM)81alum link Wrote:Particularly bizarre in that comment was the assertion that the survey was biased because it was conducted by  . . . Professor Fenelon and most of his team happen to be Native Americans. 

Not that bizarre when you add the fact that Fenelon is selling his own book (at a price of $126) on Amazon called Redskins? : Sport Mascots, Indian Nations, and White Racism.  Here is the short summary he wrote of his book:

Quote:This book assesses the controversies over the Washington NFL team name as a window into other recent debates about the use of Native American mascots for professional and college sports teams. Fenelon explores the origin of team names in institutional racism and mainstream society s denial of the impact of four centuries of colonial conquest. Fenelon s analysis is supported by his surveys and interviews about the Redskins name and Cleveland Indians mascot Chief Wahoo. A majority of Native peoples see these mascots as racist, including the National Congress of American Indians even though mainstream media and public opinion claim otherwise. Historical analysis divulges these terms as outgrowths of savage and enemy icon racist depictions of Native nations. The book ties the history of conquest to idealized claims of democracy, freedom, and honoring sports teams.

Looks like he's got a vested interest in outcome of his self-conducted survey.

Re: Saving Native Americans from Shame, Gov't Style - martyup - 06-21-2014

(06-21-2014, 12:15 PM)Publius link Wrote:This discussion is entirely too civil and nuanced for something so racially-charged.

Gladly most Cardboarders tend to keep it civil.  I'm surprised that the Stanford Indian mascot controversy has not overtaken this thread.  I thought there was more residual resentment over that decision.  I started at the Farm in '79, so I never was officially an Indian. 

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - CornFed - 06-21-2014

(06-21-2014, 11:18 AM)81alum link Wrote:[quote author=martyup link=topic=10129.msg91441#msg91441 date=1403370730]
  .  .  .  .  .Remember all the political surveys decades before Obama that wildly exaggerated the support for candidates like Tom Bradley or for Doug Wilder.  In those days the surveys proved to be wildly inaccurate because respondents lied about their own race or about their attitudes .  .  .  .  .

And in those instances respondents felt several conflicting pressures.  Many were afraid of being judged racist for not supporting the candidate of color.

Re: A Blow to Native Pride and American Freedom - CTcard - 06-21-2014

(06-21-2014, 04:24 AM)oman link Wrote:Thanks for your clarity on the subject, BC.  I do need to find some time to read the opinion and figure out where being protected from disparaging remarks fits into the trademark office's fiat.

You don't have to spend all that much time. BC's earlier post on the topic lists the relevant part of the statute (with a link to the whole statute) that explicitly forbids the patent office issuing trademarks for terms deemed disparaging.

http://thecardboard.org/board/index.php/topic,10129.msg91376.html#msg91376