Slate, New Republic latest media to ban use of Redskins team name

Slate and The New Republic Thursday joined a growing list of media outlets that will no longer refer to Washington, D.C.’s NFL football team as the Redskins, agreeing with long-held criticism from Native Americans that the name is a racial slur that should be banished from the game.

“Changing the way we talk is not political correctness run amok,” wrote Slate editor David Plotz in a post announcing the change.

“It reflects an admirable willingness to acknowledge others who once were barely visible to the dominant culture, and to recognize that something that may seem innocent to you may be painful to others," added Plotz.  

The New Republic, a political magazine, said Thursday it would follow suit after its editor tweeted that they would update its style guide, convinced by Plotz’s arguments.

Slate will simply use “Washington” in stories when it might refer to the team, which Plotz admits is not that often.

The Washington City Paper, the capital’s alternative weekly, decided in 2012 to start calling the football team the “Pigskins,” a slang word for a football, after holding a contest and public poll to pick a new one.

And journalists at other prominent news outlets have also refused to use the controversial name.

Meanwhile, Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, has consistently defied calls to change the team’s name.

"We will never change the name of the team," Snyder told USA TODAY Sports in May. "I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it's all about and what it means,'' he said.   

Despite failing to reach the Super Bowl since 1992, Washington’s team is one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world and the third most valuable in the National Football League, worth about $1.6 billion, according to Forbes.

Many football fans turned to Twitter to express their disapproval of Slate's move.

In May of this year, 10 members of Congress’s Native American Caucus told Snyder and the National Football League to come up with a new name for his franchise.

“Native Americans throughout the country consider the ‘R-word’ a racial, derogatory slur akin to the ‘N-word’ among African Americans or the ‘W-word’ among Latinos,” the caucus wrote.

Other sports teams in the United States have names related to Native American culture, including the Cleveland Indians, a baseball team with a mascot named Chief Wahoo, and the Atlanta Braves, another baseball team whose fans perform a swinging motion with their arms called the “Tomahawk Chop.” The team’s logo is a tomahawk.