Redskins

Sometimes I think our society goes too far with the idea of political correctness but I'm with football writer Peter King on this one:

A note from me about the use of the nickname “Redskins.”
I’ve decided to stop using the Washington team nickname. It’s a name you won’t see me use anymore. The simple reason is that for the last two or three years, I’ve been uneasy when I sat down to write about the team and had to use the nickname. In some stories I’ve tried to use it sparingly. But this year, I decided to stop entirely because it offends too many people, and I don’t want to add to the offensiveness. Some people, and some Native American organizations—such as the highly respected American Indian Movement—think the nickname is a slur. Obviously, the team feels it isn’t a slur, and there are several prominent Native American leaders who agree. But I can do my job without using it, and I will. My 2,400-word story on Washington offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan and his unique approach to the read-option Thursday proved you can write about the team (insightfully, I hope) and not make a big deal about not using the nickname.
I have no idea if this is the right thing to do for the public, or the politically correct thing to do, and I’m not going to sit here and
ry to preach about it and tell you if you like the name you’re wrong or if you hate the name you’re wrong. I can just tell you how I feel: I’ve been increasingly bothered by using the word, and I don’t want to be a part of using a name that a cross-section of our society feels is insulting.
I’m not speaking for my staff at The MMQB, or at Sports Illustrated. I haven’t ordered anyone who works at our new website to not use the name; it will be up to each person to decide. We had some discussions as a staff about the nickname in August, and I said in those discussions I didn’t want our site to use it. But I felt after some thought that it’s not my place to order people who I work with to do something they may not be comfortable doing. So I decided to make my own decision, then allow the other writers and editors on the site to do what they want. Also, we won’t be changing quotes to eliminate the name in stories, or editing it out of pieces from outside contributors who choose to use it. It will also appear in web tools that categorize stories for searches.
Some of you will view this as grandstanding. Some of you will wonder: You’ve covered the NFL for 30 seasons, and just now you realize this nickname is objectionable? All I can say is, you grow in your business, and you grow as a person, and you try to always be open to ideas and to what others are thinking. I told someone the other day: “That’s right. I changed my mind about it—just like I changed my mind and voted for Art Monk for the Hall of Fame.’’ Some will say you won’t read me, or the site, anymore. That’s okay. It’s a free country. Here’s what it came down to for me: Did I want to be part of a culture that uses a term that many in society view as a racial epithet? The answer kept coming back no—and now that I have been charged to run a website, I thought I would finally do what felt right to me.