With all the progress daily made in the modern world, it is important, I find, to always keep one’s head on a swivel; otherwise, that progress might make a sudden leap forward while passing in its stride that which should come along with it. Left-behinds of this kind are, unfortunately, as inevitable as friction, and the only assurance of their full avoidance is to never move an inch — this inevitability, however, should in no way be allowed to blind one to the individual instances, and it is, I believe, one’s clear duty to bring forward into the future all that one can. It is for this reason of responsibility that it must be here demonstrated the social unacceptability of the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings, which need but swim in the wake of the determined same of the former Washington Redskins.
For the unaware, on July 13, 2020, the NFL’s Washington Redskins announced that they were changing their name to the Washington Football Team — the change has since been made more complete by an attempted full rebrand as the Washington Commanders, which is often shortened to the Washington Commies. Also included in this change was the retirement of the team’s former logo — which featured a Native American man in profile while wearing a headdress — due to its over-the-top, cartoonish depiction of Native American culture. The team’s — or, Team’s — decision was recorded as welcome by most gauges of the public, though it was, however, harshly criticized for both its tardiness and general occurrence. Despite not pleasing everyone, the decision allowed the team to end its blackballing by retail partners, and once wholly rid of the offending name and logo, they were able to once again properly conduct business.
Since July 13, 2020, there has only been one other professional team in the four major sports to change its name — this is the Cleveland Indians change to the Cleveland Guardians — and this oversight continues despite the clear offensiveness of many. My personal background, however, restricts me to the damage done to Scandinavians, so I will below conclude with two reasons why the case of the Minnesota Vikings is alike to that of the former Washington Redskins, and all the remaining instances of offense will, therefore, be left aside for the exposure of others.
First, the words Redskin and Viking are near mirrors of offensiveness. Just as every Native American was not a scalping Redskin, every Scandinavian was not a marauding Viking, and the two nicknames end up having similar stereotyping effects — in fact, the general acceptability of Viking may prove it to be an even greater offender, and there are likely many who are not even aware that the term is not proper. If Native Americans are misrepresented by Redskin, Scandinavians are certainly the same by Viking; the two terms force to the forefront a narrow view of entire, multi-differentiated groups of people, and all the intricacies and accomplishments of their cultures become obscured by a name for their warriors. The specific amount of harm caused by each Redskin and Viking can perhaps be debated, but other than the fact that the usage of one is far more accepted than the usage of the other, there appears to be little difference in the circumstances of their harm.
Second, the logo of the Minnesota Vikings — which features a Scandinavian man in profile while wearing a horned helmet — is strikingly similar to the logo of the former Washington Redskins, both in stereotype and style. Were the two logos placed side by side, one would likely guess at a shared designing firm and perhaps even at a shared designer; in each is a warrior braving facing right while accessorized in the assumptions of his culture, and the most noteworthy dissimilarity between the two seems to be that the logo of the former Washington Redskins regularly featured a circular background behind its profile — a further difference is that Native Americans rarely wore headdresses while Scandinavians never wore horned helmets. Before its retirement, it was said of the logo of the former Washington Redskins that it had the effect of a racial slur, so it may here, therefore, be asked how the current logo of the Minnesota Vikings acts any differently — one can, hopefully, understand why a modern Scandinavian would not want his or her ancestors to be characterized as raiding brutes who are remembered as impediments to civilization — and the two logos can, in fact, be best compared to Hollywood movies in that all three, in their own ways, unavoidably warp the past. If one of these distortions is deemed to be unacceptable then the same being done by similar means must, inevitably, be regarded as the same.