New Names for the Washington Redskins

Five months after their first-round playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks, the Washington Redskins are facing their traditional off-season rivals: critics of the team’s name. Writers, activists, and scholars have argued for years (correctly) that “Redskins” is a racial slur against Native Americans. The name has been declared “derogatory” by the US Patent and Trademark Office, and opponents have sued—so far unsuccessfully—to have it changed. Now members of the DC Council are joining the fight.

Illustrations by Polygraph.

At-large council member David Grosso introduced a nonbinding resolution in early May calling on Redskins owner Dan Snyder to scrap the team’s moniker. “The name ‘Redskins’ is historically racist and derogatory,” Grosso said in a letter to Snyder. As a replacement, he suggested the Washington Redtails, a reference to the Tuskegee Airmen, a celebrated group of African-American World War II pilots.

He hasn’t heard back from Snyder, nor does he expect to. “Their level of respect for our body is probably not that high,” says Grosso, one of the only DC Council members not recently embroiled in a scandal of some sort. And although Snyder insists he won’t change the team’s name, here are some recommendations.

This article appears in the June 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.

Luke Mullins

Senior Writer

Luke Mullins is a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine focusing on the people and institutions that control the city’s levers of power. He has written about the Koch Brothers’ attempt to take over The Cato Institute, David Gregory’s ouster as moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, the collapse of Washington’s Metro system, and the conflict that split apart the founders of Politico.