Competitive sports and politics, or more often, sports and race or ethnicity, have been inextricably tied together – probably since the beginning of competitive sports. The early Olympics were between the athletes of the ancient Greek city-states and it has been reported that wars would grind to a stop so that the games could take place.

Of course, the modern Olympics have frequently been a place where international politics has been fought out as a kind of substitute battleground. Remember those reciprocal boycotts between the US and the Soviet Union of their respective Olympic games in Moscow and Los Angeles in 1980 and 1984 evolving out of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and the extraordinary national fervour that was in the air during ice hockey matches between the two sides when they did meet.

And then, of course, at the 1936 Berlin games, there was all that drama over Jesse Owens, an African-American, who beat the best athletes Germany could muster on the track in a stunning defeat for Hitler’s Third Reich’s racial policies. A new film, Race, makes this point explicitly – also, as a bonus, pointing to fraught race relations in America as well, when most of the nation still saw racial segregation as business as usual.

More than most people, perhaps, South Africans should be acutely aware of the near-inevitable collision of sports and politics, or sports and race. During the apartheid era, a sports boycott was a key measure imposed upon the country by virtue of broad international support for such a measure. Rebel tours of South Africa (or reciprocally) were met with mass demonstrations, international censure at the UN and, frequently, by sanctions imposed on the visitors by the respective sporting codes, once the tour was over.

A key measure of the impact of sports contact tied to progress in the casting aside of apartheid came as South Africa was brought back into the Olympics in 1992, even before the new Constitution was a done deal, but as a goad to push the country onward to the inevitable conclusion. And, of course, the 1995 Rugby World Championship in South Africa has been hailed as a key moment in the reshaping of an inclusive South African national identity.

More recently, and now on to our current circumstances, the issues of what to call South Africa’s national sports teams, from Springbok to Proteas, and the transformation of the teams into being ethnically representative of the nation’s demographics, remain socially divisive issues for many, perhaps most, South Africans. And given the largely white racial mix of most of the nation’s team sports and the racial background of most of its Olympic medallists in contrast to the nation’s ethnic mixture, race and sports are likely to remain a potentially explosive mixture in the country, especially when such cards are played by politicians eager to exploit such themes.

As an aside, the writer recalls hearing a local radio broadcaster have some kind words to say about a former soccer football team, based in the then-Eastern Transvaal, named the “Dangerous Darkies” (with the team members entirely Africans, of course). The broadcaster was quickly pilloried by young, increasingly angry callers eager to label him an incendiary type racist – until one much older sports fan called in to thank him for so fondly mentioning a team that had been successful in years gone by, and that he, the caller, had been a loyal fan of that team. Names can have real power – yes they can.

But South Africa is obviously not alone in having race, politics and sports engaged in an intricate tango. And it is not just a black and white issue. In the US, there has been a long-running and increasingly contentious debate over the names of teams at the professional, high school and university levels that could be read as disparaging towards Native Americans.

With the rise of the national civil rights movement, the growing Native American pride movement, and the resulting push-back against names, team emblems and mascots deemed to be insensitive or seriously derogatory, a number of schools and universities have swapped their team names and mascots away from variations on Indians, Warriors, Braves and the like. Instead, as replacements, they have picked less offensive names such as landmarks, animals, birds or even the occasional denizen of the sea. Along the way, the nation’s cartographic service has ended up embroiled in controversies over whether place names such as Squaw Valley and Squaw Falls are also derogatory. And there have been organised efforts to change such names to more authentic aboriginal ones. Such efforts may have resonances for South African readers as well, of course.

From that perspective, in the US, the big prizes would certainly be changing the names of the country’s professional sports teams in basketball, American football and baseball, when teams bear monikers such as Indians, Braves, Warriors, and of course, the Redskins. The baseball team, the Cleveland Indians, for example, has gained ongoing criticism over their informal war-dancing mascot, Chief Wahoo, as have the Atlanta Braves and their similarly war-dancing Chief Noc-a-Homa mascot and his teepee, at least until he stopped doing appearances in 1986. Still, the latter team’s “Tomahawk Chop”, a massed fan wave to encourage the team to win a game, continues to draw periodic criticism from Native Americans.

But the big enchilada of this controversy is, and has been for years, the name of Washington, DC’s pro football team – the Redskins. For most people, perhaps, the popular usage of the word “Redskins” elsewhere has not been seen as favourable or praiseworthy. More usually it has carried derogatory tones, per generations of films where the Native Americans drew almost universal defeat at the hands of settlers, cowboys, soldiers, and railroad builders – at least until films such as Dancing With Wolves, the remake of The Last of the Mohicans, or Smoke Signals confused that easy division.

The original owner of the Redskins, George Marshall, had owned the team when it was still in Boston. There it was named the Boston Braves as it was using the same stadium as the then-Boston Braves baseball team. At that time, professional football was considerably less popular than baseball, and much less financially remunerative. As a result, Marshall changed the name to the Redskins in order to differentiate his team from those baseball Braves. Then, when he moved the team to Washington, DC in 1937, he simply kept the name – perhaps as a cost-saving measure on stationery, uniforms and equipment. Marshall was undoubtedly a seriously prejudiced man, however. He was the last professional football team owner to bring black players on to his team, and that had happened only after some very pointed, public criticism from President Kennedy.

Over the years, after many less than successful seasons, the team became a league powerhouse, led by illustrious coaches Vince Lombardi and George Allen Sr. It became ever more closely intertwined with the city’s own special zeitgeist, helped not just by those famous coaches, some great seasons, and a whole gaggle of fabulous players, but also by what is almost certainly the best sports team marching anthem ever composed for a sports team, rather than stolen from an opera (listen here). Nevertheless, it took about 30 years of the team being in Washington before its more obviously derogatory lyrics were altered – such as replacing words like “scalping” to describe how the team would deal with its opponents.

Then, from the 1970s onwards, growing pressure from civil rights and Native American rights activists was pushed on to a succession of team owners to accept the necessity to change the name of the team from the Redskins to something less insulting to Native Americans. A decade earlier, the team had been using some rather glaring Native American caricatures in its promotional materials and game day programmes, including sections labelled “On the Warpath” and “Teepees Talk” with a cartoon Native American sticking his head outside the entry flap. This was hardly the kind of flattering image the team owners would argue was meant by the team name. Meanwhile, to protect their imagery, the team began obtaining federal trademark registrations to ensure any use of the team’s image would be controlled by the team owners.

Then in 1972, the first direct engagement with Native American leaders took place as those representatives asked team management to change the team’s name and the related imagery, such as the braided, faux-American Indian hair being worn by the team’s bevy of cheerleaders. Things then went relatively quiet on this front until 1992 when author/activist Suzan Harjo and several other prominent Native Americans filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office to ask them to revoke the team’s trademark registrations on the grounds that the name denigrated Native Americans.

While the government did not accede to the petition, a team executive wrote to its advertising company to tone down the team’s linkage to cartoonish Native Americans, saying, “As you know, the Washington Redskins are very sensitive to our image, particularly in this day and age of political correctness. No caricatures. No Indian Costumes or Headdresses. No War Chants, Yelling, Derogatory Indian Language, i.e. ‘Scalp the Cowboys,’ etc.). No Insulting Language or Humor.” But still they were the Redskins.

Then, 10 years later, the Annenberg Public Policy Center took a poll of Native Americans that, surprisingly to some, showed that 90% of Native Americans polled indicated they were not bothered by the team’s name. Nevertheless, two years after that poll, another group of Native American activists filed a second petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the team’s trademark registrations – although action on that petition was postponed until the first petition had finally been resolved. That initial petition was ultimately declined by the Supreme Court.

In response to growing public criticism of the team’s name, new team owner Daniel Snyder told the media, “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.” At that point, President Barack Obama noted his own feelings about the controversy, telling the Associated Press, “If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team — even if it had a storied history — that was offending a sizeable group of people, I’d think about changing it.”

The Washington Post, discussing Obama’s comments, noted, “Suddenly, a decades-long effort by Native American activists to force the franchise to retire its moniker reignited, commanding national attention for months to come.”

And popular NBC sportscaster Bob Costas told a nationwide audience of about 20-million people watching Sunday Night Football that the team’s name was “an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present-day intent.”

The Washington Post reported on the growing pressure, “In the months that followed, D.C. lawmakers denounced the word as ‘racist and derogatory’, and 50 US senators called on the National Football League to act.” Then, the following year, in 2014, the Patent and Trademarks Office’s Trademark and Trial Appeal Board finally rendered a decision, ordering the team’s six trademarks cancelled, giving Native American activists a stunning victory. The lawyers continue to be busy on this one, however.

The Post added that in spite of this growing pressure, “[Daniel] Snyder’s fellow owners continued to back him, but his inner circle knew their support would evaporate if one critical bloc wavered: sponsors. The league – which brought in more than $13-billion last year – shares the vast majority of its revenue with the teams. What impacts on one franchise’s finances can also affect every other team. ‘We all waited for the biggest hit of all, which was the advertisers,’ said the person close to Snyder, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment. ‘Waiting for it to happen, this sinking feeling that it was inevitable to happen after Obama weighed in. If that had ever happened, it would have changed everything. The owners would have turned against Dan.’ ” That, however, never happened.

Still, as The Post went on to note, “An enormous amount of free media coverage accompanied the push, turning Snyder into a favourite target of satirists. South Park, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and the New Yorker magazine all took aim at him.”

And the Native American cause was aided by significant contributions from the Oneida tribe that was earning significant funds through a gambling licence and its casino relatively close to New York City. In opposition to this, conservative talk radio broadcasters lined up solidly behind keeping the name as it was, as a counterweight to Obama’s apparent weigh-in on behalf of “political correctness”.

Now flash-forward to the current year. As the controversy stubbornly refused to die, and tempers continued to rise, The Washington Post contracted with survey researchers to carry out a major new national survey of Native American opinion on the topic of the team name, the Redskins.

It was a startling result. Despite all the years of effort by numerous Native American activists, the clear result, across all Native American demographics, was that nine out of 10 Native Americans still were not insulted by the name Washington Redskins – confirming the data in the 2004 survey by the Annenberg Center. In addition to this poll, Snyder had started speaking with Native American groups across the US and he established a new initiative, the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation, in response to the things he had heard during his interactions.

What Snyder heard was that his interlocutors were much less concerned about his football team’s name and much more about the socio-economic problems afflicting many on Native American tribal land. In response, his new foundation, since it was established, had disbursed nearly $4-million to some 20 tribes across the nation, and he also hired the country’s best PR firm for organisations in trouble, Burson-Marsteller, to guide him.

Not surprisingly, some activists have waved off the results of this new survey, arguing polling on a human rights issue is ridiculous, that it trivialises the damage from all those popular cultural stereotypes of the first Americans. As Tara Houska, a tribal lawyer for the Couchiching points to psychological studies that have documented the negative effects of Native American mascots and sports imagery on Indian youth. Houska told media, “A poll is not going to tell me that this doesn’t harm the self-esteem of native children.” However, in the end, or at least for this chapter of the saga, Snyder greeted this newest poll with relief, saying in a media statement, that “the team will proudly carry the Redskins name”.

And what of the lessons that can be drawn from of all this? Sports and politics – especially when they are co-mingled with race and ethnicity – can be an explosive mixture. Trying to figure out the best angle for themselves, politicians can pile on, and television advertisers and sponsors will look over their collective shoulders apprehensively to see which way the wind will blow – and most especially if it will start to cost someone serious cash. Then there is the historical nature of the question and whether there was a historical trail of bias and prejudice and if such a name plays to that history. But somewhere in all this, the feelings of the people most affected must be considered also. And sometimes, too, that vox populi may tell the decision-makers that social and economic concerns are more important than the symbolic content of what is crucial for social activists.

This is a tangled skein and, just maybe, South African sports administrators might want to take a nice, close look at the tug of war between the Washington Redskins and Native Americans for some insights and understanding of their own complex issues in their own nation. DM

Photo: Washington Redskins player Will Blackmon (C) celebrates after intercepting a pass at the goal line against Dallas Cowboys player Cole Beasley in the second half of their game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, USA, 03 January 2016. EPA/LARRY W. SMITH