Washington Post Editor Finds Another Sports Team with an Offensive Name: MLB's Texas Rangers
The Washington NFL team announced Monday that it was dropping its name of 87 years, finally capitulating to pressure from corporate entities and politicians after years of resisting pressure from leftist activists who asserted “Redskins” was racist.
Of course, the Redskins will not be the final target of the leftists, whose attacks on American history and culture are now intertwined with sports.
MLB’s Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves and the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs are sure to be next.
But what about teams whose names are not named after Native Americans?
Are they safe from the leftist outrage mob?
The answer, of course, is a hard no.
In fact, an editor for The Washington Post is now leading a charge to force a proud sports franchise in Texas to shed itself of its identity.
Karen Attiah, The Post’s global opinions editor, wrote in an opinion piece Monday that the MLB’s Texas Rangers must change their name.
The Texas Rangers’ team name must go, @KarenAttiah writes https://t.co/7KWRxpta7d
— Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) July 13, 2020
“To know the full history of the Texas Rangers is to understand that the team’s name is not so far off from being called the Texas Klansmen,” she opined.
According to Attiah, the Texas Rangers — the Lone Star state law enforcement officers — have a history of cruel racial violence. Therefore, honoring the state police agency by using its name for the baseball team in Dallas is promoting a legacy of racism.
“The Rangers oppressed black people, helping capture runaway slaves trying to escape to Mexico; in the aftermath of the Civil War, they killed free blacks with impunity,” Attiah wrote.
“In the early 20th century, Rangers played a key role in some of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history along the Texas-Mexico border. Mexicans were run out of their homes and subject to mass lynchings and shootings. The killings got so out of control that the federal government threatened to intervene,” she said.
But Attiah also maintained that the Texas Rangers have been involved in more recent atrocities.
“Rangers would be called on to protect white supremacy into the 1960s, deployed to prevent school integration,” she wrote. “In 1956, when black students were attempting to take classes at all-white Texarkana Junior College, Rangers stood by as the mob attacked them — and threatened to arrest the black students.”
Attiah said she is a native Texan and her history of going to Rangers games during her childhood gives her credibility on the issue.
Still, the Post editor’s attack on the team name very much feels like an attack on Texas and its storied history.
“My dad sometimes took my younger siblings and me to Arlington Stadium to watch the Rangers play,” Attiah wrote. “No state mythologizes itself quite like Texas, so of course, it made sense to have a team name that embodied that gauzy, self-regarding history.”
“At the same time, being from a Ghanaian immigrant family, we weren’t that invested in baseball, or the team name. I just liked going because my dad would sometimes let me take sips of his Coca-Cola mixed with beer,” she said.
“What we didn’t realize at the time was that the Rangers were a cruel, racist force when it came to the nonwhites who inhabited the beautiful and untamed Texas territory,” Attiah concluded.
The Dallas Morning News reported on June 19 that the Rangers baseball team has no intention of changing its name.
“While we may have originally taken our name from the law enforcement agency, since 1971 the Texas Rangers Baseball Club has forged its own, independent identity,” the team said in a statement.
“The Texas Rangers Baseball Club stands for equality. We condemn racism, bigotry and discrimination in all forms.”
Dan Snyder, the majority owner of the former Redskins, also once vowed he would never allow the name of his team to change.
But the outrage mob is now powerful, and its power is growing.
The MLB’s Rangers said they have “committed to listening to and supporting our communities of color.”
“Over the past 30 years, the Texas Rangers Foundation has invested more than $45 million on programs and grants in the areas of health, education and crisis assistance for youth in our underserved communities,” they said in a statement.
But according to Attiah, the team and its name are still promoting racism.
“If the team ownership, as it proclaims, condemns ‘racism, bigotry and discrimination in all forms,’ there is an easy way for it to prove that. The Texas Rangers’ team name must go,” she wrote.
Attiah admitted in her opinion piece that she and her family “weren’t that invested in baseball.”
The same can’t be said for the untold fans of the North Texas baseball franchise.
Like lifelong supporters of the former Washington Redskins, fans of the Rangers spend much of their lives cheering on their team, and they are now expected to remain voiceless as activists who don’t even watch sports politicize every aspect of sports.
Attiah’s article was a veiled swipe at Texans and their culture, and a hit piece against a storied law enforcement agency.
It was a cease-and-desist letter cloaked as commentary from an activist who is part of the same liberal mob that would like to use TNT to send Mount Rushmore into history, along with the men whose faces are carved into its facade.
That anti-cop mob has made it clear that it is working toward a future without references to American icons and without law and order.
Is there anything more iconic in Texas culture than the Rangers?
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