Trump wants to make team names racist again

Commanders and Cleveland Guardians return to their old, offensive team names. The complaints about the NFL and MLB teams echo other racist obsessions from Trump, who has integrated bigotry throughout his administration.

Trump said he “may put a restriction” on the District of Columbia’s ongoing negotiations to build a new stadium for the team if the old “Washington Redskins” name is not restored.

“The Team would be much more valuable, and the Deal would be more exciting for everyone” if the racist team name were restored, Trump wrote.

The Commanders changed their name in July 2020, during the global protests against racial injustice following a police officer’s murder of George Floyd. For many years before that, Native American tribes and groups had requested the name change, noting that the team name was an offensive racial slur.

For two seasons, the team was known as the Washington Football Team. In early 2022, the team revealed its new name, the Washington Commanders.

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On Sunday, Trump also claimed that Matt Dolan, a partial owner of the Cleveland Guardians, should force the team to restore the “Cleveland Indians” name in order to help Dolan’s political ambitions. Dolan ran as a Republican candidate in two failed Senate campaigns in Ohio. However, Trump’s animosity toward Dolan is likely because he did not support Trump.

The Guardians announced their decision to change the team name in 2020, around the same time of Washington’s announcement.

At the time, Trump was president and lashed out at both teams for “changing their names in order to be politically correct.”

The Trump administration has also complained about efforts at the local level to change team names. In June, Education Secretary Linda McMahon threatened to withhold funding from schools in New York after Massapequa High School discussed changing its mascot from “Chiefs.”

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Trump’s antagonism toward racial reconciliation stems from the fact that he is a racist.

Trump has used his second term in the presidency to mount a full-scale assault on anti-racism, and to impose racist policies on American citizens and institutions. Trump has repeatedly elevated white supremacy while simultaneously attempting to undermine and erase the achievements of Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and other racial and ethnic minorities.

In one of his Sunday posts, Trump claimed that his crusade to restore racist sports names is about the “heritage and prestige” of Native Americans. But studies show strong Native American opposition to these names. A 2020 study published in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science found that, of people polled on sports mascots, 57% who strongly identified as Native American were deeply offended by these portrayals.

Trump’s team-name advocacy is rooted in his long history of white supremacy and is out of touch with the people he is claiming to support.

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