Fuck the redskins. Fuck your statues. And Fuck Custer.
Listen.
Fuck the redskins.
Fuck the redskins, but not because they’re racist.
Not because of the history of their racist fucking name.
Not because of this douchebag.
Not even because its armful to native youth.
On this date, June 25th in 1876, the Lakota people killed the shit out of Custer and his men. This is 100 years after the first recorded use of “redskins.”
They killed him and his men because Custer was a colonialist, racist fuck who was going to stop at nothing to subjugate and kill every Native or non-white anywhere, anytime.
You know what the Lakota didn’t do?
They didn’t spend time thinking about how to rebrand Custer and his battalion so they might then be more friendly to them.
People, and lots of Native people in particular, have widely been celebrating the decapitation, drowning and general destruction of racist statues of Columbus and Andrew Jackson — and rightly so, cuz fuck those fucking statues.
But you know what we haven’t been doing?
We haven’t been spending a lot of time thinking about how to rebrand the statues so they can be more friendly to us.
The NFL is racist.
They forced Colin Kaepernick out of his job, upended his life and career because he dared to kneel.
They enact racist policies all the time.
They refuse to acknowledge that the money they make off of their players literally comes at the cost of them getting brain damage that has ruined lives.
They refuse to acknowledge the racial and colonial violence their BIPoC players and employees face in the racist system that has enabled and perpetuated the racist NFL to be a fucking thing in the first place.
Their first president was Jim Fucking Thorpe, and they let him die penniless.
Fuck the NFL.
And fuck the redskins.
Fuck the redskins because I don’t give a fuck about the redskins right now.
You know, one of the most prevalent arguments about changing the redskins name is that no other ethnic group has a racist team named after them.
Do you think that the absence of a racist named team has helped Black folx?
Would you argue that it has helped their social perception?
Would you argue that it has helped their self-esteem?
Would you argue that it has kept them safe?
George Floyd.
Breonna Talyor.
Tony Mcdade.
Preston Bell.
John T. Williams.
Trayvon Martin.
Tamir Rice.
Michael Brown.
Eric Garner.
Philando Castile.
Elijah McClain.
Jeanetta Riley.
Charleena Lyles.
Many, many more names.
An incalculable loss.
These people are being hunted and killed by a white supremacist society, and we care about football?
Fuck football.
Fuck representation.
Fuck reform.
Fuck all the shit that isn’t moving away from anything that views reform or incrementalism as the path forward.
Fuck it all and fucking tear it down.
So, in conclusion.
Fuck Custer, Fuck the Redskins, Fuck Your Statues, and Fuck You.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Black Lives Matter. Black Trans Lives Matter. Black Indigenous Lives Matter. Abolish the Police.