The global opinions editor of The Washington Post is claiming the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball club must change its name, stating the nickname praises a racist history of the state's investigative law enforcement agency.
"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 wrote in an opinion piece in Monday’s Washington Post.
"The Rangers oppressed black people, helping capture runaway slaves trying to escape to Mexico; in the aftermath of the Civil War, they killed free blacks with impunity," Attiah wrote. "In the early 20th century, Rangers played a key role in some of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history along the Texas-Mexico border. Mexicans were run out of their homes and subject to mass lynchings and shootings. The killings got so out of control that the federal government threatened to intervene."
The opinion piece comes on the day the Washington Redskins announced they would retire their nickname and logo, bowing to pressure from sponsors and advertisers.
Attiah's piece drew an immediate backlash from some, who mocked her suggestion, including The Spectator US editor Amber Athey, who tweeted that since "Many pirates were involved in the slave trade, the Pittsburgh Pirates' team name must go."
Another journalist, National Review senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty, sarcastically posted on Twitter that one "Can't name a team after groups that commit atrocities, so Indians, Yankees, Vikings, and Irish, got to go too."
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