The definition of “redskin” is a “dated or offensive” term for an “American Indian,” according to Oxford Dictionaries, which also reports that the term is a “term of disparagement.”
The definition of “redskin” is a “usually offensive” term for an “American Indian,” according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
The definition of “redskin” is an “often disparaging and offensive” term for a “North American Indian,” according to Dictionary.com.
The definition of “redskin” is an “offensive slang” that is “used as a disparaging term for a Native American,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
During an hour of research, I found several dictionaries and encyclopedias that categorized “redskin” as an offensive term and didn’t find any that reported it was a positive or neutral term.
Not only is “redskin” clearly an offensive term, but the person who founded and named the Washington Redskins football team, George Preston Marshall, was a vile racist who refused to let even one African-American play for his team until 1962, when Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall said they would revoke the federal government’s lease agreement with the team to use the football stadium owned by the government unless Marshall changed his racist policy.
So what is the point of fighting to keep a team nickname that is a slur, according to word usage experts? Is sports tradition more important than being respectful and decent to Native Americans who are being disparaged? Why is the tradition of one football team so important to so many people who aren’t even fans of that one football team?
I think the people who defend the use of a racial slur as a team nickname are motivated by two reasons – they hate the people who are at the forefront of pressuring the football team to change its name and they’re angry that polite society permits the use of fewer morally offensive terms than it used to. Below is a representative sample of comments on one of the above dictionary’s websites.
“Gee I wonder what party the CEO of Websters is associated with?” wrote one commenter. “It's not your job to comment on what you think is offensive or not offensive.”
“Libtards will argue to the death that anything is racist or offensive,” wrote another commenter. “We normal Americans need to learn how to ignore them. I have been saying for some time now that liberalism is a mental illness.”
Something is wrong with our political system if using a dictionary-defined racial slur has become a point of pride among people of certain political persuasions.
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