IMMONEN: The Washington football team needs a name change
The Washington Redskins’ trademark is such a divisive issue because it is such a racist term. On one level, the term “redskin” is reminiscent of identical slurs from a different era of American history, outdated and offensive words like Oriental or Negro (or worse) in that it paints a caricature of a race of people based on Western misgivings. Most people think the term “redskin” refers to a racial division based on a false perception of skin color, which in and of itself should be enough to persuade the National Football League to reconsider its team name. But it is much worse than that. Most people don’t know that the term “redskin” was used in California in the 1850s to refer to Indian scalps. Just like you might see advertisements for beaver skins or bear skins, there were public notices posted offering sums of money in exchange for the scalp of a dead human being. The term “redskin” means genocide: that’s what was happening in American history, a history we seem to forget.