Sorta depends who's calling the names

In wandering moment, I read a bit of some thread regarding the past, present and future of the Cleveland Indians and their logo.

As one would expect, a certain percentage of the posters were incensed that anyone should still be upset by racist name-calling in good fun. "Get over it" was a common theme.

At such moments, my mind wanders back some 40 years, to the moment when white Americans discovered that black Americans called them names: specifically, honky. Oh the outrage! Oh the fury! How dare those people call us names??

Now, naturally, some people in the thread drew comparisons saying, for instance, how much more offensive was the name "Washington Redskins." My daughter agrees, and asks how it would go down if the Atlanta NFL team were called "Atlanta N[we mustn't say that word]rs"

That argument misses the point. What matters is who's doing the name-calling.

Let's propose that we call the Cleveland team the Cleveland Rednecks, the Cleveland White Trash, Cleveland Honkies, Cleveland Crackers, or any one of several other stereotypical Caucasian-oriented epithets, with no contrary opinions accepted. Do we think that the shoe of sensibility might be on the other foot? It might; it might indeed.

I think either Cleveland Whiteys or Cleveland Crackers sound just fine. Hell, with a name change, they might even play up to their potential.