As the Washington football team finally gives up its racist slur of a name, there is one major sports team that has avoided the spotlight and resisted meaningful engagement with the violent and racist implications of its name. 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.
Karen Attiah, The Texas Rangers’ team name must go, The Washington Post (2020-07-13)
While Karen Attiah’s work in the field of racially problematizing names (other than “Karen” and “Becky”) is admirable and starts an important conversation, I believe that she missed the clearest instance of major sports team that has refused to deal with the violent and racist implications of its name: the Anaheim Ducks. To know the full history of The Mighty Ducks is to understand that the team’s name is not so far off from being called the Anaheim DuKKKs.
The team now known simply as the Anaheim Ducks began as the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in 1993, seeking to capitalize off the Walt Disney film The Mighty Ducks (1992). But even a cursory examination at The Mighty Ducks shows how deeply the film is an exaltation of white privilege, tainting any subsequent name originating from the film. The plot of The Mighty Ducks centers around a white lawyerwho after driving drunk and insulting his arresting officer is sentenced merely to community service coaching a peewee hockey team; any BIPOC in the same situation would be far more likely to end up lying in the street in blood. The rest of the film only reinforces this message. The titular team gets its name from the wealthy boss of the lawyer-convict-coach, Gerald Ducksworth, who sponsors the team and provides them with usable equipment. This vanity (gently described as “philanthropy” or “patronage”) in the style of wealthy whites from Cornelius Vanderbilt to the Koch Brothers simply reinforces the systematic inequities of capitalism that exploit BIPOC for white entertainment. Finally, the peewee hockey team only wins the championship after redistricting places one of the star players in the geographic territory of the Ducks, an endorsement of 1) the idea of ownership of people and their rights; 2) an anti-open-borders ideology; and 3) gerrymandering, a practice that entrenches Republican influence. In sum, the fact that the Ducks name is associated with the 1992 film is sufficient reason alone to call for a renaming. Cf. Actress Says She Won’t Raise Child With ‘Mighty Ducks’ Star in US Because of White Supremacy, Pluralist (2020-02-20) (citing Charlotte Edwardes, Jodie Turner-Smith Interview: The Pregnant Queen & Slim Star on Her Unconventional Rise to Fame, The Sunday Times (2020-02-09)).
But the name “Mighty Ducks,” and hence “Ducks”, is racist even without reference to the film. “Mighty” (read: “whitey”) is an implicit call to the “might makes right” ideology perpetuated on alt-right corners of the internet and the popular franchise Saban’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which proudly displayed its racist stereotypes in a color-coded format (and Ms. Attiah has already explained the racist history of the Rangers). The word “ducks” is no less problematic. The most famous ducks have already been exposed as racist, from Milkshake Duck to the Aflac duck. Moreover, to state the obvious: ducks are white. It’s thus should come as no surprise that the white supremacist group the “Proud Boys” have been spotted at Duck Duck Goose, an annual festival of duck cuisine in Miami.
But this racist franchise’s branding goes deeper than the name. The team’s current colors: black, gold, and orange show all reinforce the messaging of the moniker. The black and gold are modeled after the usage of the same by the United States Military Academy, where being black is a “beautifully painful experience” for cadets. Furthermore, the (imperialist and war criminal) U.S. Army disproportionately relies on the bodies of black soldiers for their campaigns, furthering racial injustice. The orange in the team’s scheme is a reference to Orange County: the historical stronghold for Republicans in California and a dogwhistle signaling to the Democratic masses outside of Orange County that the team is not for them.
Of course, where the Anaheim Ducks play is also full of racist overtones. The Ducks’ home ice is the now-named Honda Center. Given Honda’s problematic history of supporting the Japanese Imperial Navy, a staunch ally the Nazis, its hard to imagine how the Ducks ownership could ever accept playing in the arena unless the ownership already approved of Nazism in the first place. The Honda Center’s previous name—Arrowhead Water Arena—was so overtly racist against Native Americans that it couldn’t have come as a surprise to the Ducks that Nazis like Honda would be interested.
All in all, either the racist origins of the Anaheim Ducks franchise warrant either a complete change in identity or a league-enforced change in ownership. The current owner, Henry Samueli, plead guilty to lying to the SEC but the judge rejected the plea deal and dismissed the charges against him before trial: a precursor to the Michael Flynn case and the bending of the rule of law in the age of Trump. Perhaps the more race-conscious, progressive billionaire owner of The Washington Post, with nothing problematic in its name or storied history, should step in and save the team’s image for the betterment of American sport.
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