Texas Rangers Facing Pressure To Change Name Due To Racist Past

The Texas Rangers are currently facing pressure to change the team’s name due to the law enforcement agency’s racist past.

On Thursday syndicated Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman called for the team’s name to be changed referencing the “long record of savagery, lawlessness, and racism” of the Texas Rangers.

Via Chicago Tribune

The legends omit a lot of the reality. A magisterial new book by journalist Doug J. Swanson, “Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers,” lays bare their long record of savagery, lawlessness and racism.

“They burned peasant villages and slaughtered innocents,” he writes. “They committed war crimes. Their murders of Mexicans and Mexican Americans made them as feared on the border as the Ku Klux Klan in the South.”

A century ago, during the fighting that took place along the border during the Mexican Revolution, blood flowed like the Rio Grande. “The terms ‘death squads’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ would not enter common usage for another 60 years or so,” Swanson notes, “but that was what the Rangers were and what they did.”

Several Twitter users echoed Chapman’s sentiment.

https://twitter.com/RowlandThunder8/status/1273789669923344384
https://twitter.com/Yelluted/status/1274185670567907330

The Texas Rangers released a statement on Friday saying they have no plans to change their name despite public outcry and its connection to the famous law enforcement agency.

“While we may have originally taken our name from the law enforcement agency, since 1971 the Texas Rangers Baseball Club has forged its own, independent identity,” the team said Friday, according to Grant. “The Texas Rangers Baseball Club stands for equality. We condemn racism, bigotry, and discrimination in all forms.”