Redskins Love the Redskins


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Redskins Love the Redskins

Did you know that name "Redskins" was given to the team to honor an American Indian coach? Lone Star Dietz is his name.

Well, maybe Dietz wasn't really an Indian, but posed as one instead. There's controversy. Regardless, the name of the team was changed to the "Redskins" because of him. It was not derogatory. It was to honor American Indians (and probably some marketing).

Before the change, the name was the Boston Braves, another way to honor Indians. (The team later relocated to Washington DC.) In fact, if you start at high school and go on up to professional, there are several teams called "Braves" across different sports. I don't see anyone calling for a change of that name (yet).

Before shooting off their mouths, the Progressives and do-gooder busybodies (most of whom are not Indians--especially not Obama) should consult their stats.

Why are the Progressives calling for a change? I speculate, but I believe the following is good speculation.

According to Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow (and plenty of other researchers for that matter), humans come prewired with an automatic "substitution bias." This happens when a person encounters a problem that seems too difficult to solve. So his "System 1" brain (essentially, the subconscious) serves up an easier question to answer to substitute the original one.

It's wrong, but it satisfies subconscious logic.

Note that if any team were called the "Blackskins" or "Negros" or something like that, there would be hell to pay. There is still way too much emotional load on the black issue from the way the Jim Crow laws slowly circumvented the freedom of blacks established by the Civil War and kept racism institutionalized.

Granted, Indians were oppressed in American history (attempted genocide, in fact), but the story of the term "redskin" does not come with the same derogatory load as "nigger." Oh, some people have used the term in a hateful way, but this hatred was not nearly as permeated in the culture as with blacks.

I get the impression that Indians for most middle class people represent some kind of call to adventure. When positive, the image carries the same emotional load as pioneers or frontiersman. When negative, it feels more in the neighborhood of pirate than inferior race to be despised.

So I believe a substitution bias is at work with this clamor to change the name of the Redskins. It goes something like this: Blacks would be highly offended by naming a team after their skin color, so the same must be true for American Indians.

According to Glenn Beck's video above, 90% of American Indians polled like the name and would not like to see it changed. I don't know where this statistic came from, but if you look around the Internet where this issue is discussed and see the comments, lots and lots and lots of Native Americans are popping up to say that. And they say they would be sorely disappointed if the name got changed.

In fact, I believe the football team's name has defanged all of the derogatory connotations the term once carried in some dark corners of the mainstream culture.

Whatever.

I know I'm part redskin (Cherokee is in my genetic salad. :) ) I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia rooting for the Washington Redskins all during my youth. I've had two major thrills with that team. The first was when Vince Lombardi became coach. (It's a shame he died soon after.) And the second was from a distance (I was in Brazil) when the Redskins won the Super Bowl in 1983. I was no longer watching American football regularly by then, but I found a way to see that game.

My claim to fame with the team was when I was working during the summer break from high school. I delivered a Chicken Delight meal to quarterback Sonny Jurgensen's house. He gave me a $5 tip, too, which was more than the meal cost back then. That was one good night. :)

I loved the name Redskins as I grew up. I still do.

Michael

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I reviewed Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman on my blog. It is not surprising that you and I took away different interpretations of his thesis. My view:

Humans generally have two modes of perception. System 1 is intuitive and it tells us all about a person and their immediate context relative to us by looking at their face. You know when someone is happy, sad, angry, puzzled. System 2 is effortful and computational; it informs us of our choices for agency by engaging mental concentration. This book is about the very many errors caused by confusing the two modes. For example when statisticians intuitively assess statistical data, they are predictably wrong.

The myth of the Washington Redskins being named in honor of a coach echoes the fable that the Cleveland Indians were named in honor of a player.

Legend has it that the team honoredLouis Sockalexis when it assumed its current name in 1915. Sockalexis, a Native American, had played in Cleveland 1897–99. Research indicates that this legend is mostly untrue, and that the new name was a play on the name of the Boston Braves, then known as the "Miracle Braves" after going from last place on July 4 to a sweep in the 1914 World Series. Proponents of the name acknowledged that the Cleveland Spiders of the National League had sometimes been informally called the "Indians" during Sockalexis' short career there, a fact which merely reinforced the new name.[21][not in citation given]

Wikipedia - Cleveland Indians

My daughter manages a sports bar in South Beach and we went around on this topic once, starting with the Drunken that should read "Fighting Irish" of Notre Dame. Boston Celtics, Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys... My alma mater, Eastern Michigan University went from the Hurons to the Eagles on just such correctness. Some "real" Hurons said they liked the name, but other historians assert that no Hurons have lived in the area since statehood. So, who's to say.

I mean what if 90% of the people in a television man-in-the-street interview said they were Italian and had no problem with the New Jersey Nets being changed to the Guidos? Who gets to speak for the group? How do you define the group? I mean, myself, I never cared until about 1995 when I started collecting the Greek coins of Sicily. In fact, most of southern Italy is culturally Greek, but they speak local Italian. So, yeah, Sicilians are happy to make fun of "Italians" since those are other people entirely, more like Germans than like Greeks or Carthaginians.

There was one time I was in front of a class and, the USC Trojans were in some championship or other and I asked who would name a condom after walls that failed, let alone naming your team after the most famous losers in history. We lived for many years in Lansing and put up with MSU "Spartans" and their fans who really did not want to know about the actual culture of Sparta.

Georgetown has the bulldog "Hoyas" for their mascot. Its name comes from a made-up Greek and Latin call-and-response meant to intimidate the opposing side: "Hoyas! Holla!.... Hoyas!! Holla!!..." It has no basis in classical history.

Angels... Padres.... Saints... with the Cardinals disguised in the pun of a Red Bird, though, of course, the original Saint Louis Cardinals were probably understood as intended.

But then... what are bear-baiting, cock fighting, and dog fighting? Is it moral to put animals into mortal combat for our amusement? How then are we to understand the Eagles versus the Falcons, the Lions versus the Bears, the Panthers versus the Dolphins... May come the time when progressive activists insist that those names be changed.

Cleveland's baseball team was the Blues for a while. The Cincinnati Redlegs were caught in a scandal and the new team went to Boston to be the Red Sox. But back during the Cold War, before I got there, my high school changed from the Lincoln Red Raiders to the Lincoln Presidents. (Not very combative on the gridiron but great at the city speech club!)

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There is controversy regarding the name Washington Redskins being disrespectful of and insulting to our Native Americans. Even the President has engaged in the conversation and has suggested that the name be changed.

BREAKING NEWS – The Washington Redskins have decided to drop the name ‘Washington’ due to the heavy embarrassment.

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Michael,

What is different re Kahneman?

System 1 is "intuitive." I see that as a shorthand for the subconscious, except without the childhood traumas, etc., that psychology has assigned to it over the years.

System 2 is "effortful," meaning you have to do it on purpose. Meaning conscious.

All Kahneman did was refine the concepts of subconscious and conscious a little, made them a bit more restricted than before, so he could sound technical enough to keep justifying those government grants. :smile:

I don't see where we differ so far unless you totally reject this.

(I did say "System 1 logic," and System 2 is the only one that uses logic, but I was being almost metaphorical--like when people say "female logic" or "canine logic" and so on. I probably should have said "System 1 criteria" or something like that.)

btw - If you give a link, I would be interested in your review. I'm at Chapter 25 so far.

Michael

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Michael,

What is different re Kahneman?

System 1 is "intuitive." I see that as a shorthand for the subconscious, except without the childhood traumas, etc., that psychology has assigned to it over the years.

System 2 is "effortful," meaning you have to do it on purpose. Meaning conscious.

All Kahneman did was refine the concepts of subconscious and conscious a little, made them a bit more restricted than before, so he could sound technical enough to keep justifying those government grants. :smile:

I don't see where we differ so far unless you totally reject this.

(I did say "System 1 logic," and System 2 is the only one that uses logic, but I was being almost metaphorical--like when people say "female logic" or "canine logic" and so on. I probably should have said "System 1 criteria" or something like that.)

Michael

MSK:

kudos for bringing up the Kahneman book. I read it a couple of months ago. Great stuff. The most interesting insight, I thought, was his theory that System 1 gives us our answers and we mainly use System 2 to reverse engineer a conceptual framework to back up the intuitive conclusions. Also interesting was often we are just plain wrong with our snap judgments.

I find it interesting that this issue is so important today. Why today? Did we not have Indians around 10 years ago? What about their fragile psyches back then?

This reminds me of when our Dear Leader decided that gay marriage was no longer verbotten (he read, politically). As soon as Obama "evolved" to such a decision, the rest of us were supposed to jump on board, never mind our pace for such evolutions, if any.

We live in queer times. No pun intended.

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PDS: This is not new with President Obama. The Cleveland Indians have struggled with the logo of Chief Wahoo at least since the 1970s. (It is indeed a progressive agenda item, part of the Baby Boomer politics along with legalizing marijuana and treating gays like human beings.) Pressure on the Washington football team goes back that far, also. Realize, that while "Indians" is problematic, "Redskins" is just plain demeaning. Washington Warriors with the same logo would not draw half the complaints.

MSK: My review of Thinking Fast and Slow is here.

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I posted this in the wrong thread, I think...


I'm thinking that since "Patriot" is currently evolving in the mainstream press to mean a bigoted right-wing yahoo, maybe the New England Patriots should change their name.

Also, what's this crap about Angels? Isn't there supposed to be separation of church and sports?

Anyway, the Indians shouldn't be too worried about "Redskins" or "Braves." If I were them, I would be more concerned about the Buffalo Bills.

:smile:

Michael

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  • 4 months later...

Kahneman, with Tversky, began to develop the 'system one' as 'heuristic' in the 70's.

What it came to mean was that 'fast thinking' failed to measure up to 'Rational expectations'-- much to the later's demerit as the reigning general economic theory of Chicago School. Hence his Nobel in Economics.

Re Redskins, I fail to see how/wher there might be a 'substitution effect'. For what,exactly, might you kindly explain?

Lastly, as a research psychologist (also my chosen field as a hyper-involved senior), Kahneman would most likely caution against any reference to the 'subconscious'. Although Freudians can play fast and loose with metaphor, for an empiricist, sub-conscious must refer to an identifiable site.within the brain.

However that might be, Kahneman does offer a good evolutionaly-adaptive explanation for the use of heuristic judgment to assure survival: You're far better off throwing the spear under the assumption that it's a tiger in the bush...than not. So if it happens to be your neighbor's child instead, it was still a risk worth taking under circumstances that do not permit system 2.

Eva

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However that might be, Kahneman does offer a good evolutionaly-adaptive explanation for the use of heuristic judgment to assure survival: You're far better off throwing the spear under the assumption that it's a tiger in the bush...than not. So if it happens to be your neighbor's child instead, it was still a risk worth taking under circumstances that do not permit system 2.

Eva

Lol.

Welcome to OL.

And if you or Kahneman start looking for a house on my block, please give me enough warning to ship my children off to a boarding school.

A...

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Re Redskins, I fail to see how/wher there might be a 'substitution effect'. For what,exactly, might you kindly explain?

Eva,

I had to reread my thing to understand your question.

I was probably too vague in explaining my point. I understand "substitution bias" as the brain automatically jumping off one problem that is complicated (or painful) and solving something simpler and easier--and pretending the last is the first.

The problem Progressive propagandists have to deal with is how to get people riled up over class warfare. Whether they should or not is not the point. That is their goal and the problem is how to do it.

The only real way to do this consistently and competently is to study the class they want to inflame. Then find the sore points and resentments and stomp on them real hard. They have to get into those people's heads and build their propaganda on what they find. (Alinsky was very good at this.)

With American Indians, I don't believe they did their homework. I think they looked at this class, tried to prod them with this and that in a shotgun approach to run in parallel with other campaigns, but they encountered general complacency. Oh, there were a few Indians who always get riled, but not enough to say an oppressed class was rising. Rather than dig in and actually study why they kept fizzling, these propagandists opted to do something that worked for blacks--stomp on resentment over a derogatory term.

It's a simpler problem to solve. Yell foul about a derogatory name someone in an "oppressor class" uses and the people in the "oppressed class" get pissed. That's the way it works for blacks. And gays to a certain extent. (Look what happened to Alex Baldwin recently.)

So the simpler problem is do that instead of doing the hard work of cultural penetration and analysis.

Except it backfired. The term Redskins is not perceived as derogatory by most Native Americans and there is so little resentment about this, it's futile as a battle cry.

I realize propagandists try all kinds of things in a "throw a ton of crap on the wall and see what sticks" manner, and at first I thought they were doing this with the name Redskins. But as I kept seeing these dorks talk on TV and read what they were writing, it occurred to me that some of them actually believed the simpler problem (how to call foul on a term) was the solution--that it was actually the way to get the class riled. The bias was sincere. Wrongheaded and it didn't word, but it was not a dishonest ploy. For some I believe it was sheer manipulation, but not for a lot of them.

I see this as a good example of substitution bias in action, with the resulting failure reality so graciously provided.

Is that clear now or am I still being vague?

Michael

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Lastly, as a research psychologist (also my chosen field as a hyper-involved senior), Kahneman would most likely caution against any reference to the 'subconscious'.

Eva,

One last comment on your post. I agree with this re research psychologist, but my approach is to couch jargon in simpler terms for an audience that is not made up of research psychologists (that is, technical people).

I hold the opinion that if you cannot explain complicated ideas in simple language, you will not communicate well and, more often than not, you will have some serious monkey-wrenches in the works gumming up the gears.

It's a chosen habit, too, even when I delve into complicated material. I come from a self-help orientation, not an academic one. (You may shudder, I don't mind. :smile: ) I find if I do not try to simplify at first, my own understanding suffers and I later embarrass myself with some really lame mistakes.

Incidentally, I'm going through the videos of Tal Ben-Shahar's Harvard course on happiness. (It's on YouTube, believe it or not.*) I'm delighted he and his guests use this same approach. They are a lot more precise and scientific than the self-help people are as they are more invested in academic rigor, but anyone can understand what they say without being an expert.

One of the best ways to simplify is to use a metaphor the audience easily understands for the big picture and point to the similarities while making it clear there is a lot more technical stuff to learn for those interested. That's what I was doing with making a parallel between conscious and subconscious and System 1 and System 2.

Do I screw up at times? Yup. I'm an autodidact and it comes with the territory.

But the best way I know how to fix it is make the information relevant. Simple metaphors work well for this. Without relevance to my life and/or previous understanding, I get bored real fast. And so do most audiences in my experience. (I'm a Randy Olson fan for what it's worth, even though he is a goddam Progressive. :smile: )

btw - This relates to why I have criticized your RoR discussions as boring for the general reader (as I'm sure you will come across**). But that is another discussion and a little more complicated. :smile:

Michael

* To the interested reader, here is an introduction to Tal Ben-Shahar's thinking and approach. It's not the Harvard course, but an overview--one I find friendly. It's still an hour long. You can find the Harvard course searching his name on YouTube.

** (Added later.) Ah ha! I just went to RoR and saw it there (on this page) in all its glory. :smile:

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Technical debates are always fun to mix into, especially when all you have is a smattering of the jargon, and no real understanding of the issues.

But as far as this "campaign" goes the NCAI (National Congress of American Indians, the "Uncle Tomahawk" of native American civil rights groups) put together a propaganda film for badmouthing the "Redskins" as a team name, to be aired during the Super Bowl. No-one was willing to pay for the airtime. Why? I suggest that all investigate the native American comedy group, the 1491s to find out why. Their TEDx talk was especially revealing.

Of course the arguments are all crap. "Redskins" and "Red Indians" were actually only one nation of native Americans: the Beothuk. They had intermarried with the Viking explorers over a millenium ago, and thus were fairer-skinned than other tribes, and more subject to sunburns. To deal with this, they would strip down to the buff, and smear their bodies with ochre and cranberries, dyeing their skin red, using it like a modern suntan lotion. Of course, this made war parties more fun, too, coming out looking like a bunch of red demons & scaring their enemies half to death. These were the only true redskins. Should this really be considered a racial epithet?

Apropos of this technique, let us also remember how William Wallace and the Scots would strip themselves down to the buff and smear blueberries on their skin, dyeing their skin blue. This made their raids on the English more fun too, a bunch of blue men mooning the Brits and scaring them half to death.

Hey, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The Redskins should not change their name until the Blue Man Group ends their heinous racial attack on the Scots, by changing their name too.

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Technical debates are always fun to mix into, especially when all you have is a smattering of the jargon, and no real understanding of the issues.

Causiously agreeing with you.

I have been trying to decide on a thread that would start to incorporate one (1) clear historical record of what the fuck we do, or, do not know/understand about the folks that inhabited the continent prior to the 1600's.

A....

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Michael,

Thanks for your replies. You're the consumate host who's able to keep lively discussion going.; I therefore invite you over to RoR to set things right.

My responses:

* I have no death wish. I believe that the guy to tried to rape me called my 'dollhead', too. I understand that his frat brothers still leave flowers at his gravesite, some three years later.

This is why I object to the constant flow of 'rape' over at RoR. Cutie-pie names are fine, however. I'm slender, 5-6 with light brown hair, huge blue eyes, smile and cheekbones to match. 'Not at all dikey. 'Just had a breakup (sob!). Attend college in Atlanta....

** Yes, I agree that the Redskin issue may be an excuse to get things riled up. So thanks for the Kahneman analogy. The acid test is whether or not real native americans give a shit. So for once we have every reason to believe Limbaught that they don't.

The hopeless sanctimony of liberalism is their efforts to create outrage independent of the non-outraged subject. This is racism at its worst--telling other people how to feel. The fact that they do it all the time (and as a raised- on- campus brat I do see it that often!) may indicate some sort of ill-conceived sincerity on their part.

*** 'Sub-conscious' is simply a bad metaphor on the layman's level because it assumes a layered effect to cognition which belabors the point. We zap people all of the time and fail to find said 'layers'. Zones in the cortex and a Thalmic systemiof many parts. yes....but what needs to be emphasized is that all thought occurs within the thin depth of four stacked cloth table napkins.

A similar misguided metaphor is that awful nuclear symbol with electrons orbiting a nucleus. The proplem is that having these notions to contend with inhibits learning how things work...

Eva

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Eva,

I'm not welcome at RoR.

Long history.

Some juicy gossip if you're up for it. :smile:

Rape?

Dollhead?

Gravesite?

Good Lord! I hope you're not a PCP (Politically Correct Policewoman) or a raging homicidal maniac! :smile:

I used the Dollhead moniker for Naomi because of her avatar and clunky name. Her avatar has a big-ass doll head and the name Dollhead sounds cool. That goofball name she chose doesn't.

I tried to run with your 4-layer napkin metaphor, but I think you need some practice at making metaphors. Talk about arcane! :smile:

Try to explain to a layman that the reason he can't keep his New Year resolutions is because the layers of his metaphorical napkins are... they are... er... they do... uhm... what are they doing? :smile:

Try this one, which I used in a different recent post. But let me adapt it for Kahneman. System 2 is like a rider and System 1 is like an elephant. If the rider wants to go one way and elephant wants to go another, the elephant will go where it damn well pleases. The only way the rider can get the elephant to go where the rider wants to go is to make the elephant want it, too.

(Elephant-speak is story for the most part, but that's a whole other issue.)

I guarantee you the layman understands that, although he will feel the "System" thing is weird and if you keep saying it too much, it will start to make his eyes glaze over. But in moderate doses, he can use that to do something productive in his life.

I don't even see him sneezing or wiping his mouth on your four napkin layers.

So go from Kahneman's System 1/System 2 to subconscious/conscious and it still looks like the elephant and the rider to the layman. That's the form the layman understands this stuff. You can clean it up with napkins later if you find a layman who becomes interested in learning the technical stuff, and maybe the metaphor will work in that situation.

I totally disagree with you about how a metaphor inhibits learning, even one you disapprove of for atoms. If you are trying to teach and a metaphor like that is one of your greatest obstacles to imparting information, I say that reflects a hell of a lot more on your lack of teaching ability than on the student's capacity to learn.

In fact, I suspect you suck at teaching laypeople. (I don't mean that as an insult, just an observation based on your posting style.) The Heath brothers call this the "curse of knowledge." (If you don't know about this, you should look it up.)

You wanna know what inhibits learning for real? Boredom inhibits learning. That's what. In fact, you definitely should know that already. You're doing psychology, fer Kerissssakes.

Nothing induces boredom in laypeople more than an academic looking down his or her nose at them.

Nothing.

Oh, there might be a surge of anger at first, or maybe amusement, but the boredom sets in pretty quickly.

I know of what I speak.

I'm a hillbilly. (At least I was...)

:smile:

Michael

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My job is to help business people arrive at a clear, concise, and complete description of their business needs and problems and then to explain those needs and problems to technology people in such a way that they can provide the right solutions. My boss tells people that I'm bilingual. That is, the way I speak, the words I use, and the analogies I employ are completely different depending on which group I'm communicating with. In the "business world," it's the techie geeks who are the laypeople. In the "technology world," it's the business geeks who are the laypeople. In the end, in order for all of us to be successful, we have to understand exactly the same thing in a way that is relevant to the role we each play.

So yeah, what Michael said.

Also, hillbillies unite!!!!

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Michael and Dide,

* My point was not that metaphors are bad; we obviously use them all of the time to make complex stuff simple.

Rather, there are good and bad metaphors. Use the wrong one and the listener will get the wrong idea.

To this end, heuristic, system #1 is best metaphorized by Kahneman himself: "Uhhh, you were thinking too fast. Slow down a little, amigo, so you can think things out!"

**No one seems happy over at RoR except a small coterie of fissiles. I've gotten several letters from others who have been driven off.

*** No, I'm just an average gurly-gurl who's lucky enuf to have taken a self-defense course, and to have been able to use it at the right time. The mace-spray helped, too.

**** Lastly, on learning as such: yes boredom is an inhibitor. But the listener must also make an effort. Or as i expressed myself in my high-school teaching stint of last year (math, physics, and philo), don't be a Goldilocks! Not eberything is going to be just the way you want it!

Eva

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