Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing to change the supposedly offensive Washington Redskins team name despite previously using the term “Negro” and crediting President Obama’s success to being “light-skinned.”
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decided Wednesday by a 2-1 vote to strip the Washington Redskins of six federal trademarks, which helps anti-Redskins activist and disputed tribal leader Ray Halbritter’s campaign to drive down revenues the team gains from selling Redskins merchandise.
Reid, who previously appealed to the USPTO in 2012 to set up a new office in Las Vegas, said on the Senate floor that Redskins owner “Daniel Snyder might be the last person in the world to realize this, but it is just a matter of time until he is forced to do the right thing and change the name.”
Reid previously made some offensive racial comments of his own in 2008, according to the book “Game Change.”
Reid said that America was ready to embrace Obama because he was “light-skinned” and spoke “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
Reid later apologized for his remarks.
“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” Reid said then. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments.”
Reid, who formerly served as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission and has taken massive campaign contributions from casino interests, is currently fighting to expand Indian reservation land in his home state.