Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
I don't watch football so this isn't an issue I follow much (for example I don't know what the opinion of the team name is among Native Americans in polls). But I see a clear difference here. This is a team name that is using an actual ethnic slur of a real people as its name. If orcs were instead called something like that as their name, sure that would be pretty hard to ignore. Instead we are going by two lines in a description from tolkien, and again, it isn't clear to me if he was pointing to an actual race or not in that description. I just think it is a lot more murky.
CW: Racial slurs
I'm not sure how one can make the argument that [sblock]
redskin
slant-eyed
You keep making the argument that you don't believe JRRT intended that passage to be racist, but (a) nobody's arguing that he did and (b) he very clearly leaned on a number of all-to-common racialized tropes at the time to flesh out the description of his "irredeemably evil" creatures. That is, at best, an indifferent perpetuation of actually harmful stereotypes. The intention here isn't really all that relevant; the impact is what is. We can argue all we want about the extent of that impact; I'm not sure that I'd go quite as far as others have on either the historical impact nor the modern legacy of the same, but I'll add my voice to those saying "it's not clear that the was actually drawing on real-world racial tropes" in JRRT's description of orcs is a completely indefensible position.
*"Red Delicious - At Least We Got The Red Part Right!"
**Granny Smith apples are more than acceptable for baking, at least.