Native Americans protest before the Minnesota Vikings and Washington game in Minneapolis. (Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
As a new NFL season kicks off tonight, the debate over the Washington football team’s nickname and mascot is ramping up again.
A coalition of more than 100 Native American and social justice activism groups, led by the efforts of the Oneida Indian Nation, are asking NFL broadcasters to not use the team’s name during their broadcasts this season, WAMU reports. And just this morning, another major newspaper announced they’ll no longer use the team’s name: New York Daily News.
In an article entitled “Sack the Name,” the Daily News writes that they’ll now refer to the team simply as “Washington” in their sports coverage. The Daily News argues that the team’s name “is a throwback to a vanished era of perniciously casual racist attitudes,” and they write that “no new franchise would consider adopting a name based on pigmentation,” like the “whiteskins” or “blackskins.”
Additionally, the newspaper also announced they’ll no longer print the team’s logo, replacing it “with an image that uses the team’s burgundy and gold colors to key readers to stories, columns and statistics relating to Washington.”
The Daily News’ decision to omit the name of the Washington football team comes not long after the editorial board of another major newspaper, the Washington Post, announced they’ll no longer use the team’s name. (Though the Post’s news-gathering side will continue to, Editor Marty Baron explained).
As to why they’re ending use of the team’s name now, the newspaper writes that “as attitudes evolve, words can move from common parlance to unacceptable in good company,” such as derogatory terms to describe African-Americans, mentally disabled, and people with disabilities that were once used as commonplace.
But, quite simply, the Daily News poses this simple question as a test to whether the team’s name is offensive: “Would you use the term in referring to Native Americans in anything other than a derogatory way?”
