Succumbing to mounting public and financial pressure, the NFL team formerly known as the Washington Redskins announced plans on July 3, 2020 to “thoroughly review” the team’s name, which many had decried for years for its racist connotations. On July 13, 2020 the team announced it would retire the controversial name and call itself the “Washington Football Team” pending adoption of a new name. The team’s former website, redskins.com now refers to a new site, washingtonfootball.com. The team had been using the Redskins name since 1933.
Native American groups and others had been calling for a name change for decades, noting the term redskin is offensive and perpetuates racial stereotypes. In 2013, the National Congress of American Indians issued the report “Ending the Legacy of Racism in Sports & the Era of Harmful ‘Indian’ Sports Mascots.”
“We’ll never change the name,” team owner Dan Snyder told USA Today in 2013. “It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”
In the wake of the social uprising that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020, the team’s top sponsor, FedEx, threatened to cancel the remaining $45 million of its stadium naming rights contract if the team didn’t change the name. Within days, the team relented.
See redskin.
« Back to Glossary Index