Jeb Bush Says Washington Redskins Shouldn’t Change Team Name

“I don’t find it offensive”, Bush said of the franchise’s name. In 1994, St. John’s University in New York was among the first to switch team names when they shifted from the Redmen to Red Storm because it was offensive to Native Americans; three years later, the Miami of Ohio Redskins changed their team name to the RedHawks.

Bush, the former Florida governor, went on to describe “a similar kind of flap” at Florida State, where the school and the Seminole Tribe of Florida have a close and unusual bond. In April, he contributed $100,000 to the Right to Rise Super PAC, a legally unaffiliated pro-Bush committee for which Bush himself actively raised money.

“It’s a sport, for crying out loud”, the GOP presidential candidate added. He doesn’t think politicians should have an opinion on the matter at all, but when he was asked about the controversy surrounding the Redskins’ name on the Sirius XM show “The Arena“, he revealed that he doesn’t mind the name or find it offensive. Obama had said he would “think about changing it”. “He clearly is missing something”, the statement said, per Bustos.

Change the Mascot is a grassroots campaign that works to educate the public about the damaging effects on Native Americans arising from the continued use of the R-word.

“This should be a very simple open-and-shut issue in the 2016 campaign: No presidential candidate should be promoting this racial slur against Native Americans”, Change the Mascot said.

Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s non-voting congressional delegate, introduced a bill earlier this month to strip the National Football League of its federal antitrust protection as long as it allows the team to use “Redskins”. The team’s name is a racial slur that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Native American people, and reduces proud cultures to an insulting caricature.

That has not been the case for the Redskins and team owner Daniel Snyder.

Clinton wrote that she wanted to call then-Rep.