In essence, you're arguing for strict majority rule, which is kinda what got us into some of the biggest messes this country has faced since its inception.
There is little to no danger in respecting the wishes of a minority populace, and most of your point doesn't hold weight because no one is actually forcing the Cleveland baseball team to do anything. The pendulum of public opinion has increasingly disliked the use of indigenous people as mascots for the past few decades - and for good reason, in my opinion - and the private sector is responding because they see it ultimately hurting their bottom line in the long run.
You are accurate in that no one is forcing Cleveland to change their name.I question whether you are accurate in stating public opinion has shifted to disliking the Indians moniker--as I pointed out in my very first post in this thread, there is nowhere close to a consensus amongst actual Indians about the nickname, and opposition to the nickname doesn't even appear to be a plurality.I say again, if not even a plurality of a group in question finds a nickname offensive, why would any other group?I would argue that telling a group they should be offended by a nickname when they're not is itself a form of racism; it's stating to that group they are uninformed and ignorant of how they should feel, and need other people to tell them what to do.
I also disagree with your views on majority rule--there are certainly times when the minority should be followed, but those times need to be very carefully selected, else you risk making the majority feel disenfranchised.A disenfranchised majority is at best divisive, and at worst violently and reactionarily repressive.I would also ask you to name any government in history that operated under any form of strict minority rule that didn't encounter any messes.Making mistakes is endemic in humanity, and it is the height of both naivete and arrogance to assume our current generation is somehow immune to that.Human progress is not measured by whether or not mistakes were/are made, but by how quickly and completely those mistakes are/were identified and corrected.
My final point here would be to say that I actually don't care if the Indians change their nickname, and I don't care if they do so because the owners have come to believe Indian is a racist term.It is their property, and they have the right to dispose of it as they wish within the constraints of the law.I simply believe, as a large swath of the Indian population does, that Indian is not a racist term, and treating it as such is foolish and counterproductive, in the sense that productive people/societies generally don't spend their time addressing problems that aren't actually problems.If we really wanted to do something positive for Indian communities, how about trying to fix the fact that the median income is $23k a year, and 1 in 3 live in poverty?Precisely how does the Cleveland baseball team changing it's name fix any part of that?
The answer of course, is that it doesn't.And it's why this issue is so dangerous.It allows our society to believe we're making progress, and are getting better, without having to actually face difficult realities.This is quite separate from the forere/aremer nickname of the Washington Football Team, which is and was quite clearly a slur, regardless of whatever positive intentions may have existed in naming the team.But it seems to me that wanting to honor the inhabitants of this continent at the time modern European immigration began for their bravery, resourcefulness, and knowledge (all desirable traits in athletes) is a good thing, so long as it is done in a respectful way.Naming your team with a term many if not most Indians use to define themselves seems to fit that definition.