A caller this morning expressed his incredulity that The Star doesn't normally print the name of Washingon's NFL team: the Redskins.
"With all of the other things there are to worry about in the world, like homelessness and wars, why does anyone worry about this?" he asked.
As I've said many times, I'm not big on comparisons unless they're awfully close parallels, and I fail to see any relationship between war and the name of a football team.
And here, I also agree very strongly with The Star's longtime policy on this matter. I remain unconvinced by every argument I've ever heard that the name is not a racial epithet, plain and simple. And I'll even break my usual rule about commenting on issues outside The Star's journalism to say that I find it inconceivable that the NFL still allows such a patently offensive name and mascot to represent the league in 2012.
I almost always come down on the side of publishing a word when it's the crux of a debate (as I did here in the first paragraph). It isn't healthy for discourse to pretend any words or thoughts don't exist.
But I see no compelling reason for any publisher to reprint an egregiously offensive term as a casual matter of course. As brighter minds than mine have noted, nobody would be surprised if a newspaper or website decided not to name a team that used any other racial slur. I don't understand why this should be any different.
Team names
Another take on team names:
“The Washington Bullets are changing their name. They don't want their team to be associated with crime. From now on, they'll just be known as the Bullets.” Jay Leno
Redskins
First of all, I find a newspaper adopting a policy of
censorship to be more than a little strange. Second, it
may have escaped your attention, the Kansas City's NFL
team also uses Native American imagery in their name
and logos. It is easy to pontificate on out of town
teams and ignore the inconvenient truths in your own
town, isn't it? Third, numerous polls have been done
on this including by Sports Illustrated and the Univ
of PA which have found that the name is not an issue
with Native Americans. They are far more sensible than
political correctness nitwits like you give them credit
for. All in all, you come across like an extreme
p.c. nut and your paper suffers for it.
"Chief," "brave," "pirate"
"Chief," "brave," "pirate" and other words used for mascots aren't specific references to the color of a person's skin. There may be another related -- but much different -- discussion to be had with team mascots referring to any cultural or racial identity. But I don't know of any other team name out there that's based on nothing but skin color. And if there were one, it should be dealt with similarly. It's a lot like objections to offensive caricatures such as Chief Wahoo. Nobody is "censoring" anything. The Star's many-years-old policy is the sensible decision not to use a word that is offensive to many people in a casual way.