This is an ironic story about an earnest band.
The Slants are an all-Asian American dance rock band based in Portland, Oregon. They’ve performed all over the world and all over TV, attracting attention and a following for their infectious combination of 80s synth pop and “hard-hitting, indie, floor-filling beats.”
They’re also the founders of The Slants Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to changing culture by amplifying under-represented voices in the arts and activism. The Foundation, funded by The Slants, offers annual scholarships, non-profit financial sponsorship, mentoring and patronage for aspiring artists, and more.
But given the amount of media attention they drew during their landmark legal case, odds are that you know them best as the band that took on the U.S. federal government over the rights to their own name, a battle that found them an “unlikely ally” (as founder Simon Tam put it) in the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins, which had a vested interest in the band’s ability to name themselves using a racially loaded term.
Let’s watch The Daily Show correspondent Ronnie Cheing help the band tell their story.
That’s right: the U.S. government fought to prevent the band from calling themselves The Slants, because the term was too racist to be applied to Asian Americans. Even by Asian Americans.
Adding irony to irony, while the U.S. Trademark office was filing appeals to the band’s lower court victories, other parts of the government were embracing The Slants for their work in promoting Asian American culture. The Department of Defense asked them to perform, and the Obama Administration asked for their help in an anti-bullying campaign–all while the case was wending its way upward to the Supreme Court.
The Slants won of course, and it wasn’t even close. An unusually unanimous 8-0 victory cleared the way for The Slants to legally own their band identity, and Tam wasted no time putting their unlikely ally on notice: “Just because something is permissible,” he said in an interview with U.S. News and World Report, “doesn’t make it the right thing.” He called on the Washington football team to change their name, explaining “I think it’s their social responsibility to do that.”
It would take a few more years and a worldwide social uprising, but the Washington Football Team finally dropped their prior name. But this is a Springsteen blog, not a football blog, and by now you’re probably wondering where the Bruce connection is.
Not long before the Supreme Court handed The Slants their hard-fought legal victory, the guys stopped by the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union and sat down with the staff to performe a few songs.
The last song they performed that day was an acoustic cover of “Born in the U.S.A.,” appropriate for the venue as a social protest song, but particularly powerful when sung by an Asian American band. The band knew it, too–watch them drive home a key line to full effect.
The Slants retired from performing just before the pandemic. They still record, but today they focus mainly on their work with the foundation, working to lift up and amplify new, undiscovered, and under-represented voices.
Check out more of The Slants’ music here.
