As the men looked at the woman, collectively nonplussed, one of them responded, “Really? What about Atlanta Braves? Or the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo?”

“They’re all culturally insensitive, but the term ‘redskins’ is the absolute worst,” the young man replied. “Can you imagine the public outcry if a team was named the ‘Yellowskins,’ or the ‘Blackskins?’ No one would stand for it.”

“So, you probably agree with the decision to stop using the Chief Okemos logo here in Okemos, too, right?” asked a man in a Detroit Lions cap.

“Yes, it was long overdue,” said the woman. “No other culture in America has had to put up with denigrating team names like ‘Warriors,’ ‘Indians’ and ‘Redmen.’”

Just then, my cell phone rang, and I had to go meet my wife at the other end of the mall. But thoughts of the discussion stayed with me.

The assertion made by the young couple that “Redskins is the No. 1 most objectionable sports team name” sparked my interest. Once home, I quickly learned via Google that there’s major support for this position.

In fact, the only barely credible report I found to the contrary was a 2004 University of Pennsylvania National Annenberg Election Survey asking a single add-on question of people identifying themselves as Native Americans: “The professional football team in Washington calls itself the Washington Redskins. As a Native American, do you find that name offensive, or doesn’t it bother you?”

The survey’s conclusion: calling Washington’s professional football team the Redskins did not bother 90 percent of Native Americans in the survey, while 9 percent said the name was “offensive.” One percent didn’t answer.

“The survey’s two problems,” says Ellen Cushman, MSU associate professor of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures, faculty member of MSU’s American Indian Studies Program and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, “is that the sampling is flawed as it relies on self-identification rather than actual representation of tribal citizens. And 768 respondents is an extremely low number of people. In Navajo and Cherokee tribes alone there are more than 500,000 citizens. This can’t possibly be a statistically significant response.”

The larger problem, says Cushman, is the teams don’t have sanction and support from the tribes they claim to represent. “Look at the Florida Seminoles — no support. Or Central Michigan, which got support from the (Saginaw) Chippewa. In the latter, the name wasn’t deemed as offensive so much as it helped link the tribe to the college more.”

There’s ample evidence that American Indians don’t support use of team names such as Redskins. For more than five decades, member tribes of the National Congress of American Indians, or NCAI collectively have opposed use of such mascots.

In 1999, following a U.S. Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decision canceling federal protection of the trademark name Redskins, then NCAI Executive Director JoAnn K. Chase said, “These mascots in no way honor Native Americans. … (They) serve to perpetuate racism and bigotry toward Native Americans.”

Today, the two main camps on the issue remain locked in place. Some agree with former Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke that the name “… stands for bravery, courage and a stalwart spirit.” Others, including the NCAI, agree with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page that the Washington Redskins “is the only big-time professional sports team whose name is an unequivocal racial slur.”