Adidas pledges to help high schools ditch Native American mascots

A grass-roots group that opposes sports teams using some Native American nicknames and mascots has praised Adidas for its new campaign to help high schools make a change.

The German shoe and clothing maker on Thursday offered free design resources to any schools that want to give up their Native American nicknames, mascots or logos. The company said it would also provide financial support to ease the cost of switching.

“This is a tremendous display of corporate leadership,” said leaders of the group Change the Mascot. “We hope that a number of companies including FedEx, whose name adorns the Washington NFL team’s stadium, will step forward and follow Adidas’ lead.”

It has been estimated that more than 2,000 schools nationwide use Native American nicknames for their sports teams. Adidas announced its effort as the White House Tribal Nations Conference was underway in Washington.

“High school social identities are central to the lives of young athletes, so it’s important to create a climate that feels open to everyone who wants to compete,” company executive Mark King said in a statement.

The NFL’s team in Washington, which is the target of campaigns to change its nickname, blasted the decision by Adidas.

“The hypocrisy of changing names at the high school level of play and continuing to profit off of professional like-named teams is absurd,” Washington spokesman Maury Lane said in a statement. “Adidas make hundreds of millions of dollars selling uniforms to teams like the Chicago Blackhawks and the Golden State Warriors, while profiting off sales of fan apparel for the Cleveland Indians, Florida State Seminoles, Atlanta Braves and many other like-named teams.”

The Washington team’s statement was rebuffed by the organization Change the Mascot, which released the following statement by spokesman Joel Barkin:

“In response to the admirable decision by Adidas to take a stand against offensive Native American mascots the Washington NFL team’s spokesman listed a number of ‘like-named’ teams, but only the R-word is a dictionary-defined racial slur. The Washington NFL team is trying to create a false comparison to other sports teams because slurring Native Americans with the racist R-word epithet is completely indefensible. The issue is not complicated — no sports team should be promoting, marketing and profiting from the use of a racial slur. Dan Snyder and his cohorts are finding themselves increasingly isolated because they insist on clinging at all costs to a blatantly racist mascot.”