Redskins in Indiana?
Many sports sections in newspapers across America have a ban on referring to the Cleveland baseball team as the “Indians” and the Washington football team as the “Redskins,” etc. So reported the National Weekly Edition of The Washington Times (June 9-15).
We admit that we don’t give much attention to American Indian issues. After all, we’re not an “ethnic studies” magazine. Still, once in a while we’ve given a side glance to Americana-Indiana (Jul.-Aug. 1999, pp. 16-17; Sept. 2002, pp. 25-27).
Anyhow, the story in The Washington Times was about how the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has banned Indian sports mascots from its pages for nine years, has reversed its policy.
Well, sort of. While the Star Tribune will now actually print Washington Redskins, it will not allow the shortened version of Redskins, which is Skins. How odd! We thought the supposedly offensive part was Red, not skins. Go figure.
Well, at least a small step forward has been taken on behalf of free speech.
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