The Washington Redskins name controversy involved the name and logo used from 1933 to 2020 by the Washington Commanders, a National Football League (NFL) team in the Washington metropolitan area. In the 1960s, the team's longtime name and associated logo began to draw criticism from Native American groups and individuals. The topic, part of the larger Native American mascot controversy, began receiving widespread public attention in the 1990s. In 2020, the team responded to economic pressure in the wake of the George Floyd protests by retiring the name and logo. The team called itself the "Washington Football Team" before rebranding as the Commanders in 2022.
"Redskin" is a pejorative slang term, considered by some a racial slur, for Native Americans in the United States and First Nations in Canada. The term redskin underwent pejoration in the 19th to early 20th centuries, and in contemporary dictionaries of American English it is labeled as offensive, disparaging, or insulting. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the word as "an extremely offensive word for a Native American (a member of one of the groups of people who were living in North and South America before Europeans arrived)".
For several decades, the team's owners and management, NFL commissioners, and most fans sought to keep the name, claiming that it honored the achievements and virtues of Native Americans and was not intended disparagingly. Then–team president Bruce Allen noted that three high schools with a Native American–majority student body used the name. Supporters also pointed to a 2004 Annenberg Public Policy Center poll that found that most Native Americans were not offended by the name. The use of public opinion polling methods to measure the opinions of a small, diverse population was criticized by scholars, in particular the use of self-identification to select the people surveyed. The name was opposed by the National Congress of American Indians, which said in 2013 that it represented 1.2 million people in its member tribes.
Name change In July 2020, amid the removal of many names and images as part of the George Floyd protests, a group of investors worth $620 billion wrote letters to major sponsors Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo encouraging pressure on the Redskins to change their name. FedEx called on the team to change its name on July 2, 2020. The same day, Nike removed Redskins apparel from its website.
On July 3, the league and the franchise announced that it was "undergoing a thorough review of the team name". Amazon, Target, and Walmart then withdrew Redskins merchandise from their stores and websites. On July 7, it was acknowledged that the Redskins were not in contact with a group of Native Americans who petitioned the NFL to force a name change. Redskins head coach Ron Rivera said the team wanted to continue "honoring and supporting Native Americans and our Military". The review resulted in the decision to retire its name and logo, playing as the Washington Football Team pending adoption of a more permanent name.
Team president Jason Wright announced on July 12, 2021, that the new name would have no connection to Native Americans, research having shown that anything other than a clean break with the past is a slippery slope. While the team expected fans to continue to wear their jerseys with the former name and logo, Native American inspired headdresses or face paint would not be allowed in the stadium.
In January 2022, the team announced that it would choose between the names Armada, Presidents, Brigade, Red Hogs, Commanders, RedWolves, Defenders and the then-current "Football Team". The new name, the Washington Commanders, was announced on February 2, 2022. In its press release, the team emphasized the military symbolism of the graphic elements in the redesigned "W" primary logo that accompanied the name. The design of the new "crest" combines elements of the team's history and its connection to the city of Washington.
Activist Amanda Blackhorse responded that the name change was an empty gesture, the team's owner and management having made no substantial effort to acknowledge or repair the effects of decades of insults or advocate that other teams with offensive mascots also change.
In a 2024 poll, The Washington Post found that most local fans dislike the name Commanders but do not favor a return to the old name. In August 2024, Commanders owner Josh Harris reiterated that the team would not return to its old name for "obvious reasons".
History
In 1933, the football team that shared both the name and playing field with the Boston Braves baseball team moved to Fenway Park, already home to the Boston Red Sox. Co-owner George Preston Marshall changed the name to the Redskins, more likely to avoid confusion while retaining the Native American imagery of the team than to honor coach William Henry "Lone Star" Dietz, whose identity as a Native American was debated. The logo for the NFL Braves was similar to the Redskins logo, a Native American head in profile with braids and trailing feathers. A redesigned logo introduced in 1972 was proposed by Walter Wetzel, a former Blackfoot tribal chairman and past president of the National Congress of American Indians, and was modeled after the likeness on the Buffalo nickel. Members of the Blackfoot tribe express a range of opinions, from support to indifference to strong opposition to the Redskins name based upon their personal experiences. In 2024, Republican Senator Steve Daines has stated his intention to block a bill to renovate RFK Stadium unless the Commanders honor the old logo and the Wetzel family. However, some members of the Blackfeet Nation council wonder why little of the money generated by the team while using the logo has been shared with the tribe.
Advocates of changing the team's name said that stereotypes of Native Americans had to be understood in the context of a history that includes conquest, forced relocation, and organized efforts by federal and state governments to eradicate native cultures, such as the boarding schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Since the first Europeans made landfall in North America, native peoples have suffered under a weltering array of stereotypes, misconceptions and caricatures. Whether portrayed as noble savages, ignoble savages, teary-eyed environmentalists or, most recently, simply as casino-rich, native peoples find their efforts to be treated with a measure of respect and integrity undermined by images that flatten complex tribal, historical and personal experience into one-dimensional representations that tells us more about the depicters than about the depicted."(Carter Meland (Anishinaabe) and David E. Wilkins (Lumbee) are professors of Native American Studies at the University of Minnesota.)
Origin and meaning of redskin
The historical context for the emergence in the Americas of racial identities based upon skin color was the establishment of colonies which developed a plantation economy dependent upon slave labor. Prior to the colonial era, many Europeans identified themselves as Christians rather than white. "At the start of the eighteenth century, Indians and Europeans rarely mentioned the color of each other's skins. By midcentury, remarks about skin color and the categorization of peoples by simple color-coded labels (red, white, black) had become commonplace."
Documents from the colonial period indicate that the use of "red" as an identifier by Native Americans for themselves emerged in the context of Indian-European diplomacy in the southeastern region of North America, before later being adopted by Europeans and becoming a generic label for all Native Americans. Linguistic evidence indicates that, while some tribes may have used red to refer to themselves during the Pre-Columbian era based upon their origin stories, the general use of the term was in response to meeting people who called themselves "white" and their slaves "black". The choice of red rather than other colors may have been due to cultural associations, rather than skin color.
In the debate over the meaning of the word "redskin", team supporters frequently cite a paper by Ives Goddard, a Smithsonian Institution senior linguist and curator emeritus, who asserts that the term was a direct translation of words used by Native Americans to refer to themselves and was benign in its original meaning. In an interview Goddard admits that it is impossible to verify if the native words were accurately translated. Darren R. Reid, a history lecturer at Coventry University, contends that Native American usage was generally attributed to them by European writers. Reid states that the team logo works together with the name to reinforce an unrealistic stereotype: "It is not up to non-Indians to define an idealized image of what it is to a Native American." The "positive" stereotypes allow fans and supporters to honestly state that they are honoring Native Americans, but this is "forcing your idea of what it is to honour those people onto them and that, fundamentally, is disrespectful". Sociologist James V. Fenelon makes a more explicit statement that Goddard's article is poor scholarship, given that the conclusion of the origin and usage by Natives as "entirely benign" is divorced from the socio-historical realities of hostility and racism from which it emerged.
Advocates of changing the name emphasize current meanings in dictionaries of American English, which include "usually offensive", "disparaging", "insulting", and "taboo". Such meanings are consistent with the usage found in books in the period between 1875 and 1930, which is after that studied by Goddard. John McWhorter, an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, compares "redskin" becoming a slur to other racial terms, such as "Oriental", which acquired implied meanings associated with contempt.
A controversial etymological claim is that the term emerged from the practice of paying a bounty for Indians, and that "redskin" refers to the bloody scalp of Native Americans. Although official documents do not use the word in this way, a historical association between the use of "redskin" and the paying of bounties can be made. In 1863, a Winona, Minnesota, newspaper, the Daily Republican, printed an announcement: "The state reward for dead Indians has been increased to $200 for every red-skin sent to Purgatory. This sum is more than the dead bodies of all the Indians east of the Red River are worth." A news story published by the Atchison Daily Champion in Atchison, Kansas, on October 9, 1885, tells of the settlers "hunt for redskins, with a view of obtaining their scalps" valued at $250. For sociologist C. Richard King the lack of direct evidence does not mean that contemporary Native people are wrong to draw an association between a term that emphasizes an identity based upon skin color and a history that commodified Native American body parts.
Trademark cases
The meaning of the term "redskin" was addressed in two cases challenging the trademark registrations held by Pro-Football, Inc., the team's corporate entity. The challenge was based upon a provision of Federal trademark law (the Lanham Act) which prohibited the registration of any mark that "may disparage persons, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols, or bring them into contempt, or disrepute". In both cases, the plaintiffs prevailed at trial, establishing that the name Redskin was disparaging to Native Americans. However, both decisions were overturned due to legal issues other than disparagement.