Trump's demand for Washington NFL team name change ignores years of psychological data, experts say

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Trump’s demand for Washington NFL team name change ignores years of psychological data, experts say

By GRAHAM LEE BREWER
Updated 8:30 AM EDT, July 27, 2025

President Donald Trump is threatening to hold up a new stadium deal if Washington’s NFL team did not restore its name to a racial slur, despite decades of psychological research showing the negative mental health impacts of Native American mascots.

The president is demanding a private company change its name to something that researchers have linked to a variety of negative mental health outcomes, particularly for children, said Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians. The organization has been pushing back on stereotypes of Native Americans since the 1950s, including Native sports mascots.

“This is a big reminder with this administration that we’re going to take some backward steps,” Macarro said. “We have our studies, we have our receipts, and we can demonstrate that this causes real harm.”

More than two decades of research on Native mascots have shown they lead to heightened rates of depression, self-harm, substance abuse and suicidal ideation among Indigenous peoples, and those impacts are the greatest on children. Citing this data, the American Psychological Association has been recommending the retirement of Native mascots since 2001.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/washington-commanders-trump-73f3f59ad00c34b2ee92cec9b247525c

[Ocelot II]

1. Why would Trump care about that? If something makes some "other" person feel bad,

so much the better. Obviously the original name never should have been used in the first place, but it was given at a time, the '30s, when racism was even more overt and accepted than it is now. It had become controversial as long ago as the '60s when Native American groups started protesting mascots based on Native images. "Redskin" is listed as an offensive slur in dictionaries, but Trump and his white supremacist pals are fine with offensive slurs. I don't think it would bother him in the least if the team called itself "the Washington N*****s."

[tanyev]

4. That's what happens when a racist a**hole who never shuts up about how he thinks the world

should be run manages to get himself elected President of the United States of America. And then he sets up a social media platform so everyone in the entire world can be subjected to his demented ramblings in real time.

[Bayard]

2. These names have never made any sense,

Naming teams after a people they despise, and for which they have no respect.

[Ocelot II]

3. The names were chosen in the same sense as animal team names are chosen -

the Chicago Bears, the Detroit Tigers, etc. - animals that are fierce and powerful. Native American names were chosen as symbols of fierce, powerful creatures like bears and tigers, since Native people were once considered to be fierce and powerful subhuman savages, not human beings. Despite claims that the use of Native names is flattering because the names imply strength, that's bullshit because they are regarded in the same light as the animal mascots of many other teams.