You’ve probably heard much controversy about the football team name “Redskins” in the news lately. People argue that this name is akin to a team being named “N*****” to “honor” African-Americans or “C******” to “honor” Caucasian people. Clearly, these derogatory terms would never be used as a team name, so why should the term “redskin” be used?

Some people wonder if the name is actually offensive to Native Americans. The word “redskin” has been in use for a very long time and has always been seen as a negative term.

According to The Washington Post, the term “redskin” originated back at the end of the 17th century. People issued bounties to kill Native Americans and required proof of their kill. A human body can be large and heavy and transportation was difficult so, in place of the body, people would scalp the corpse or the genitalia and bring that as proof of the murder of a Native American. This “trophy” was referred to as “redskin.”

That is not the only derogatory use of the word “redskin”, though. There are references to the word in media outlets and even novels that used it in a derogatory way. The Washington Post also reports that an unnamed 1871 novel spoke of “redskinned devils” and a newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News, once described a war on whites by “every greasy redskin.” These types of references have even been portrayed in movies by iconic actors such as Eddie Cantor and Bob Hope. As expected, the reference was not a compliment to Native Americans.

People also act like the uproar over the name is a surprise, as if the very idea of people using a slang word to insult an ethnicity has never happened. Really? People have been referring to ethnicities in slang words that are meant as an insult for a very long time.

The list – which I won’t publish here — is endless. The term “redskin” is no different from any of these terms, insults targeting specific races of people. Yet it is a name for an American football team. The answer seems so simple, but I’ll say it: Would it make sense to name a team “Washington C*******?” No, it doesn’t, so the current name should be changed.

Change for the team name should be gradual and involve the fans, the most important part of any team. They should first come up with, say, 10 names and put them out for voting on the website. Let the fans pick what they want the name of the team they support to be. It is understandable that it will probably be very costly to do this, but it isn’t right for a team name to insult an ethnicity.