Washington Redskins Name Controversy: New York Daily News Will No Longer Use Name Redskins

The Washington Redskins will no longer see their name in print from the New York Daily News.

The New York publication has joined a growing number of publications that are refusing to use the controversial name. Many have called on Washington to end the name, which is viewed by Native American groups as offensive.

In a story headlined “Sack the Name,” the newspaper pledged that “will no longer refer to the Washington professional football team by its unacceptable nickname.”

The statement read:

Enormously popular and deeply ingrained in sporting culture, the Redskins name is a throwback to a vanished era of perniciously casual racial attitudes. No new franchise would consider adopting a name based on pigmentation — Whiteskins, Blackskins, Yellowskins or Redskins — today. The time has come to leave the word behind.

Loyalty, tradition, affection and nostalgia all weigh heavily toward accepting the name as an artifact that has been cleansed of derogatory meaning by association with celebrated athletics.

While the team ownership and many fans hold such a belief in good faith, the inescapable truth is that the term Redskin derives solely from the racial characteristic of skin tone in a society that is struggling mightily to be color-blind.

While many have spoken out against the name, others have defended the Washington Redskins. In an interview on The Redskins Historian website, the former Chicago Bears player and coach Mike Ditka:

“What’s all the stink over the Redskins name? It’s so much horsesh*t, it’s incredible. We’re going to let the liberals of the world run this world. It was said out of reverence, out of pride to the American Indian. Even though it was called a Redskin, what are you going to call them, a Brownskin? This is so stupid it’s appalling, and I hope that owner keeps fighting for it and never changes it, because the Redskins are part of an American football history, and it should never be anything but the Washington Redskins. That’s the way it is.”

Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has stood by the team’s name, saying he will not change it.