Nike has pulled all merchandise pertaining to the NFL’s Washington Redskins from its website following calls from the team’s sponsors to change the name of the franchise.
Searches for Washington Redskins apparel on Nike’s website yielded no results Thursday night, the day after 87 investment firms sent letters to three Redskins sponsors, Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo, urging them to end their relationships with the team if it did not change its name, according to Fox Business.
“In light of the Black Lives Matter movement that has focused the world’s attention on centuries of systemic racism, we are witnessing a fresh outpouring of opposition to the team name,” the firms said to Nike in the letter. “Therefore, it is time for Nike to meet the magnitude of this moment, to make their opposition to the racist team name clear, and to take tangible and meaningful steps to exert pressure on the team to cease using it.”
FedEx specifically holds the naming rights to the team’s home stadium, and the company CEO holds a minority ownership in the franchise.
“We have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name,” FedEx said in a statement.
This explains why Nike took all the Redskins merch off its site. Wow. https://t.co/NdqZfnT4uA
— Ryan Field (@RyanFieldABC) July 3, 2020
Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has been criticized for the team name in recent years after some felt the name “Redskins” was offensive to Native Americans, but Snyder said in a 2013 interview that he will “never” change the name.
“We will never change the name of the team,” Snyder said. “As a lifelong Redskins fan, and I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season.”
A Washington Post poll conducted in 2016 found that 9 out of 10 Native Americans are not offended by the team’s name, and another poll in 2019 showed that the most frequently picked word when Native Americans were asked to describe how they felt when they heard the term was “proud.”
Critics, including some Native Americans, argue that the name is offensive and should be changed, including former NFL head coach and television commentator Tony Dungy, who said this week that he refers to the team simply as “Washington” on the air in order not to offend anyone and thinks the name should be changed.
“You can say, ‘This has been a historic name, and we’ve used it for this team for X number of years,” Dungy said, “But in this day and age, it’s offensive to some people, so we’re going to change it.’ I don’t think that’s hard.”
