The Washington Redskins have been asked to change their name several times over the years, but they are under the most pressure to do so in 2020.
A group consisting of 87 investment firms and shareholders have reportedly written a letter to Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo, asking all three companies to terminate their partnerships with the team if the name is not changed.
Via Mary Emily O’Hara of AdWeek:
“On Friday, three separate letters signed by 87 investment firms and shareholders worth a collective $620 billion asked Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to terminate their business relationships with the NFL’s Washington Redskins unless the team agrees to change its controversial name.”
“Many of us have raised this issue with Nike for years to little avail,” said the letter sent to the NFL’s official apparel provider. “But 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. 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.”
As you might now, FedEx holds the naming rights to the stadium where Washington plays and Pepsi is the league’s official soft drink of the NFL, and it presents the halftime show at every Super Bowl.
“This is a broader movement now that’s happening that Indigenous peoples are part of,” Carla Fredericks, director of First Peoples Worldwide and director of the University of Colorado Law School’s American Indian Law Clinic, told AdWeek. “Indigenous peoples were sort of left out of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s in many respects, because our conditions were so dire on reservations and our ability to engage publicly was very limited because of that. With social media now, obviously everything is very different.”
