On Monday, at the request of Snyder’s representatives, the leader of a Nevada tribe was supposed to attend a news media event with Snyder. But the leader has since backed out, and now the hunt is on for a stand-in Snyder can trot out at another news media event scheduled for Wednesday.

To my friends who still embrace the Washington football team, especially those with whom I huddled in front of television sets on many a game day, do not be fooled. The fight over the team’s name is not some politically correct reflex to overly sensitive Native Americans, as Snyder would have you believe.

It is a rallying point, symbolic of a larger struggle against the most pernicious and enduring kind of American exploitation — racism in service to capitalism, the truly shameful principles upon which the nation was founded. To carry out the genocide of Native Americans and enslave Africans to work stolen lands, white capitalists facilitated the portrayal of both groups as less than human.

Respect, dignity and justice for all — that’s what the fight is about.