Would you root for a professional sports team called the Los Angeles Niggers? How about the Cincinnati Faggots? No? Are the Carolina Crackers more your type of team? Perhaps the Golden State Wetbacks could be your favorite ballers? These names are offensive and not only degrade the person speaking them, they dehumanize and marginalize the people on the receiving end of the slur. How is it that in America in the year 2014, the NFL team that represents our nation’s capital is still called the Redskins?

 
To call someone a “redskin” is to say that the color of their skin is more important than the content of their character. It is akin to negatively labeling someone based on religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity. It’s wrong. It’s illegal. Yet somehow it’s tolerated in the NFL. That tolerance is mirrored in nearly every sports page in the country.

 
The indigenous peoples of the continent have only known suffering since Europeans first started exterminating and raping them in the 1400s. Allowing the use of racial epitaphs is only adding insult to injury.

 
In October of last year, the San Francisco Chronicle made the decision to stop using the name when describing the team in print. Audrey Cooper, the paper’s managing editor told Politico in an email, “Words are very powerful, and so is how we choose to use them.” Cooper went on to say, “Our long-standing policy is to not use racial slurs. Make no mistake, redskin is a racial slur.”

 
The editors at Slate and Mother Jones agree. These papers have also dropped the insensitive moniker from descriptions of the team. Instead, they simply refer to the team as “Washington.”

 
The one person who could end the controversial use of the name, though, seems determined to keep the slur as the mascot. Dan Snyder, the team’s owner, insists that it is his right to use whatever name he’d like for his team. Snyder also says he will never change the name. Never.

 
This is despite calls from Barack Obama, Bob Costas and more than a few members of Congress. The Oneida Indian Nation has launched a campaign to pressure Snyder to change the team’s name and has received support from all corners of the globe.

 
People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals has suggested that if Snyder doesn’t change the name, he should change the logo to that of a redskin potato. PETA wrote in a recent blog post: “Potatoes are also native Americans, having been cultivated in Peru for millennia.”

 
Whether or not Snyder changes the team’s name or not, we should refuse to use hurtful demeaning language, regardless of the consequences.

 
People in 1937 found it appropriate to name a football team a slur. We should be better than that today.