For a long time, logos have been a popular fixture of American sports. From football to basketball to baseball, every team has a unique name and mascot. These range from tough tigers and fierce falcons, to abstract concepts like the year of the California Gold Rush, to everyone’s favorite–caricatures of race.

The most well known of these teams (especially in this area) is the Washington Redskins, the perennially mediocre football team owned by Dan Schneider. The team’s name has been argued over again and again, with many a passionate case being made on both sides. Schneider even filmed ads of Native Americans declaring that not only were they okay with the name, they were proud of it.

Many teams use Native Americans as their logos. The Atlanta Braves, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Indianapolis Indians, and the Chicago Blackhawks are just a few examples across the sports world. Notice, however, that none of these names are racial slurs. Braves and Chiefs may promote a stereotype of Native Americans being proud and tribal, and Indians may keep an inaccurate term around for longer, but the word “redskins” quite literally originated as a way of differentiating Native Americans from whites. While many debate if the term referred to the practice of scalping, it was often used by whites to separate Native Americans into another group, even to put themselves above Native Americans. A comparable word for any other race or skin tone would be immediately thrown out as racist and discriminatory, but in the United States, the long history of outright ignoring the concerns of Native Americans enables Schneider to simply shrug off complaints.

But what of the other ethnically-based logos? Very rarely is anyone offended by the Minnesota Vikings, the New York Yankees, or the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. This is because of the regions the teams are based in. Yankee is a term that, while seldom used, refers to people from the northern United States, specifically New York. Minnesota is a majority white area with mostly Europeans of German, Norwegian, Irish, and Swedish descent. All of these groups would be proud to be associated with the viking culture, and some may have vikings in their direct ancestry. Similarly, South Bend, Indiana has a decently-sized Irish population, likely proud to be aligned with the fighting Irish. This is why it would make quite a lot more sense for the team to bear a Native American-based name if they were in the rural Midwest, a region with an actual Native American demographic, unlike Washington D.C., a region with less than 1.4% Native American representation.

Now I’m not here to tell you to stop supporting your team, or that the team’s name should be changed. Those are your and Dan Schneider’s decisions. However, it’s not up to individual opinion to decide whether the Redskins’ name is baseline offensive or not–it is.