Mike Wise won't say "Redskins"?

I see no evidence that his writing is stilted. I read a column on Clinton Portis and it read fine, and he didn't do it by writing "Washington' over and over again. It's possible, if you're a deft enough writer, to avoid the team nickname without making the reader stop. But if it ever did affect the quality of the prose, then I would agree he should use Redskins.

And no, this wouldn't work as a department-wide policy, for the reasons you pointed out. But an individual columnist can certainly make it clear to the reader that he's writing about the Redskins without ever using their nickname.

 

Well, we're arguing about it because a reader wrote in complaining...

 

No, no, no. You can't draw the parallel between "redskins" and the N word. No. Sorry. No.

 

Why is that, Shottie?

If you use it to describe somebody outside of the NFL team -- if you go to a reservation and start referring to the people living there as redskins to their faces -- are you saying it won't be considered a pejorative?

You're kidding yourself.

 

Mike Wise's next column: he goes to McDonald's and orders FREEDOM fries!

 

OK, if you don't think it's fair to compare it to the N-word (and I don't think it's equal, but there is certainly a similarity) then how about this:
Imagine a team calling itself the Washington Darkies, and having a proud African warrior in their logo. That's roughly the equivalent of the Redskins' situation. No team would dream of doing that today. The only difference is that the Redskins were named when it was more acceptable to throw around that kind of term, and now it's been around so long that people don't often think about what the term is really saying.

 

Dave Burgin and Robert Lipsyte once wrote columns about this in the 1980s or 1990s. The one I read was Lipsyte quoting Burgin, so I forget which one wrote this example: team called the New York Jews, and every time the team scores, crowd chants, "Such a deal!"

 

Dear Mr. Wise:

Before you call that outfit "full Hollywood regalia," you may wish to do some actual research. If you do, you may discover that the Seminole Tribe of Florida actually designed that outfit and the "full Hollywood regalia" is actually designed and handstitched by members of the Seminole Tribe on the reservation in southern Florida and has been since the start in 1978 --- then-Chief Howard Tommie not only personally approved the concept, but also had members of the tribe design and sew the first uniform. The silver necklace worn by the student portraying the Osceola character was also made on the reservation. Its attached charms are Spanish coins collected by the Seminole Indians. (The Seminole people have quite a few of those. The Spanish ... well, typically they found themselves no longer requiring money.) The information in this link may conflict with your image of Native Americans as near-naked savages. Not my problem.

As Jim Shore, the tribe's legal counsel and also a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, noted a year ago in an interview with the Tampa Tribune, "An (actual) Seminole warrior of the 1800s couldn't be depicted in modern time. But this character has a great resemblance to what he should be. It's modernized, not theatrical. The school has checked with us, over and over again. And we have no objections to how he's portrayed. It's always respectful."

Sincerely,
2muchcoffeeman

 

How dare you bring facts and quotes into this argument? We're all about opinions here.