Quote Originally Posted by Thondalar View Post
The fact that you aren't a Redskins fan makes the concession tiny to you.

I would argue changing the team name would be just as offensive to the hundreds of thousands(millions?) of fans as not changing it is to the (hundreds?)tens of thousands of Native Americans.
As with Methais, I encourage you to personally ask a Native American about this issue. As near as I can tell, to use a slur is to treat someone as less than human. To indoctrinate children into the use of this slur by means of 90,000 chanting people is, from my perspective, horrifying.

I have not personally followed a team that has changed its name, but I have followed a team that changed its name and location: the Hartford Whalers are dead. I did not find this experience dehumanizing. This could arguably be because hockey isn't a major sport, but still.
You will easily scoff at this idea, because only your own perception of things matters to you.
A significant amount of empirical evidence contradicts this assertion. I am not sure how much of it is transmittable, but in a general sense I think you would be better off not dismissing disagreement on its face. "Oh you only disagree because you're myopic/stupid/ignant" is unlikely to be universally true, in the same way that "oh you only want to reform welfare because you hate black people" is.