I agree w anon it shouldn’t matter what there name is. If they get to keep there stadium and coach why can’t the wetbacks change their name or at least put it in quotations? The team might not be offended because theres not that many mexicans playing football but what if this was soccer or “futbol”? And I wonder how some of those black players on that team feel considering their own history w the n word.

you clearly to understand cleverly written satire.

Tradition, in this case, is a bad thing. Why? Because the term “Wetback” is still used frequently in a derogatory manner towards Spanish speaking Americans. Yeah, it’s not the way you mean it, or you may not think of it that way, but just because YOU don’t, or the other Wetback fans don’t, doesn’t make it alright.

That’s like saying the word “nigger,” or any variation thereof, isn’t bad because the people who use it don’t think of it or mean it in that way. The fact of the matter is that simply the use of such a derogatory term keeps people down in a very subtle psychological manner. Words like that should be left behind on the road of history to die because its use doesn’t bring anything good to anyone. A team name should be uplifting, positive, and decent in, if nothing more, a rudimentary fashion.

The wrong here, isn’t in the meaning of the term Wetback, but in the unwillingness to see the need to evolve over time just because the name Wetbacks is traditional. The Cleveland Browns were a team for decades before they were disbanded and changed to the Baltimore Ravens. My point here is that tradition doesn’t matter, and shouldn’t matter, if the times seem to be calling for the natural progression of any one thing.

In this case, the name “Wetbacks” is like coal. The people in the towns mining and living off the coal love it because it’s their tradition. They mine like their father and their father’s father. Their livelihoods depend on the mine and they see nothing wrong with it. One the flip side, coal does little good for the world compared to the bad it does. Now there are newer forms of energy that are not only cleaner, but much more efficient than coal. Yeah, it sucks that the people in the mining towns will have to find something new, but that’s life.

The term Wetbacks is only positive to those who participate with the team. To a lot of other people, that term sucks. And really, what would be lost from a name change? You have the same players, same coach, same staff, same stadium, but all of a sudden the tradition and memories mean nothing because of a simple name change? Sounds like a pretty frail tradition to me.