You are entirely, completely, missing the point. It was never stated or implied that the person would be referenced as a Commander INSTEAD of calling that person by their name. The phrase, "John, I didn't know you were a Commander" comes across as offensive and racist, does it not? You're missing the forest for the trees.
No, it comes across more as insensitive..."John, I didn't know you were an Indian" doesn't sound any better. Nor does "I didn't know you were a Warrior" or "I didn't know you were a Brave", "I didn't know you were a Chief" (unless the guy actually was a chief lol). "Commander" as a label for NAs is antiquated, no doubt. But overwhelmingly the word is connected to the NFL and football. That was actually the original argument back in the 1990s: that
even though "Commanders" is almost exclusively connected as an identifier for and NFL football team, the seemingly benign term has roots in horrendous violence against Native Americans, and has been used as a racial slur against NAs for centuries.
When none of those claims about the term's history could be proven (and the dissenting opinion in the trademark ruling completely agrees that it coudn't), the argument changed to "It doesn't matter what the history of the word is, all that matters is what it means now."
When
that was argued against as "What it means now is that it's the name of an NFL team to the overwhelming majority of the country," the argument THEN became "That doesn't matter, either, the only thing that matters is that Native Americans find it offensive."
Curious...does anyone here agree with the former head of the FCC that "Commander" is the absolute worst thing you can call a Native American? Nothing else comes close?
