The New York Daily News Will No Longer Use The Term "Redskins"

This is kind of a big deal. In an editorial published yesterday, The New York Daily News announced that the paper will no longer refer to the Washington football team as the "Redskins," and will no longer print the team's logo. This isn't just a decision from the editorial board, as was the case when the Washington Post made a similar but less meaningful announcement. This is the entire paper erasing the team's racist name and logo from its pages.

From the editorial:

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.

As of today, Dan Snyder's moist upper lip has not commented on The News' decision.

[ NYDN]