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The Washington Slants of the NFL? Could be the new name. Simon Tam likes the sports entendre.

Three years ago this month, Simon Tam won the right to call his rock band something that was considered a disparaging name, The Slants.

The Supreme Court affirmed unanimously that Tam could trademark and reappropriate the term legally. (AALDEF joined an amicus brief in support of The Slants.)

But it bothered Tam that some people actually thought fighting for his name would enable the Washington NFL team to continue using its name, which sounds like it could be redskin potatoes or peanuts but actually refers to human beings, Native Americans.

Tam stuck to his beliefs and fought the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which would have stripped him of his band’s name.

“The cure to hate speech is not censorship,” Tam said on my podcast back in 2017.
This week, Tam was proven right when the marketplace, and not the government, prevailed over the Washington NFL team owners on the name. Fearing the loss of billions of dollars in marketing revenue, the team dropped the offensive name.

Tam felt relieved and vindicated. Hear his reaction on my Emil Amok’s Takeout.

And hear how Tam helped Native American activist and author Jacqueline Keeler, whose group, Eradicating Offensive Native American Mascotry, fought the Washington NFL team for years.

Both of them admit that it likely would not have happened without #BLM, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor creating a period of reckoning in American society on race.

Listen to “Emil Amok’s Takeout.”
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Read these AALDEF blog posts for a history of The Slants and their trademark case:

2017: The Slants’ Simon Tam speaks candidly on podcast: The cure for hate speech isn’t censorship. . .let communities decide, not government.

2015: Simon Tam’s fight to reappropriate “The Slants” seems more uphill than ever

2014: Trudging on: The fight for Native American justice, The Slants, and Stephen Guillermo’s posthumous degree

2011: My slant on The Slants and other Asian American “N” words