ICYMI: From Washington Redskins to queer culture, the uneasy evolution of the slur

Neil Macdonald on the changing nature of slurs and how our perceptions of what is acceptable and what is not changes:

Personally, for the sake of consistency, I’ve begun to avoid using the word “Redskins” in news reports about the controversy surrounding the team’s name.

It goes against my grain to do so; I’m a speech libertarian, and I believe we should shrink from no word if it is relevant to the discourse at hand, which, in this city, Redskins most certainly is.

But I also try, at least, to avoid hypocrisy, and there’s plenty of that in the discussions of the controversy surrounding the team.

The word itself is a self-evidently racist, slangy, condescending term for Indians, as a U.S. government commission ruled just recently. And yet we in the news media still use it when describing the team, simply because the team’s owner refuses to consider changing the name.

Imagine for a moment someone naming a team the “Houston Wetbacks.” Or the “New York Coons.” Would we repeat those names in reports? To ask that question is to answer it.

Other slurs are so radioactive they cannot even be uttered in a hypothetical discussion, so I wont. Again, I don’t think any word should be off-limits to discussion, but like the comedian Louis CK, I despise the fig-leaf coyness of euphemisms like “the n-word.”

So why is it still acceptable to use the term Redskins?

Do we allow ourselves to use it because it’s the name of a major sports team? Or is it still the name of a major sports team because we allow ourselves to use it?

Some people say that not all Indians regard the word as necessarily racist. But pretty clearly a large number of them do. Indian groups have tried, and failed, to force a name change.

That leaves us with the ugly conclusion that native Americans simply don’t have the political clout in the U.S. that some other minority groups have acquired through vigorous activism.

From Washington Redskins to queer culture, the uneasy evolution of the slur – World – CBC News.