Teams are finally changing their names, and what exactly is “cancel” culture

The NFL world was hit with a bombshell last Thursday when there were reports that the Washington Redskins were officially asked by FedEx to change the name of their team. The shipping company is the team’s stadium sponsor — Washington has played at “FedEx Field” since 1999 — and CEO Fredrick Smith is a minority owner in the franchise. Hours later, Nike — the official clothing and jersey sponsor of the NFL — removed all team apparel from their website.

There have been calls to change the name for years from Indigenous American groups and others due to its racism, and finally it seems that the monetary threat may be enough to force the team into change. On Friday, the team officially announced that they would “Review the current name”. It seems near certain that the franchise in Washington DC will soon have a new moniker.

A day later, the Cleveland Indians of the MLB would review their nickname as well, potentially swapping names in the near future. The Indians notably changed logo’s before the 2019 season, retiring Chief Wahoo, a logo so obviously racist it is hard to believe it existed.

Despite the logo change, there is still something extremely uncomfortable about the Indians name. Using an ethnic group entirely unrelated to the team itself as a logo feels disgusting. “Indians” — whether reference to Indigenous Americans or people from India — is not a term that should be used as a mascot no matter what the logo accompanying it is.

It is unsure when either of these two teams will unveil their new logos. The MLB will return to action late this month, so Cleveland will have a rebrand ready for the 2021 season at earliest. Washington is in a similar spot. Training camp kicks off in July, with preseason in August and the regular season in September (assuming COVID-19) does not delay everything). There is absolutely no way either franchise gets an entire rebrand done over the course of a few weeks, meaning it may be a while before we find out the future nickname the teams will use.

While the steps the first two teams are making are great, the work is not quite done yet in American professional sports. The Atlanta Braves and Chicago Blackhawks still exist in the MLB and NHL respectively, and pressure will surely be on both franchises to join the aforementioned teams in the near future. The defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs still exist as well, though…