Indian Country 52 #26 – Redskins

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“The word “redskin” is getting a tweaked designation on Dictionary.com when it comes out with its next edition: It’s officially being labeled as “disparaging and offensive” — in all cases, not just some.

“In our next update, we’re removing ’often’ so the label just reads ’Slang: Disparaging and Offensive,’” Jane Solomon, senior content editor and lexicographer at Dictionary.com, told MTV News.

There has been a lot of buzz about the word of late, as the Washington Redskins’ name was put in peril when the United States Patent and Trademark Office canceled six federal trademark registrations for the team name because it’s “disparaging to Native Americans.”

A high school in Pennsylvania also thrust the term into the public eye when student editors lobbied to censor the word, which is also their mascot, and the school board responded by passing a policy requiring them to print it in editorials and letters to the editor. They are currently considering a lawsuit.

“We have a Native American parent in our district who filed a complaint [against the term], so one of the editors started to listen to it — well, we all started to listen to what she was saying and then one of the editors suggested we should take a stand ourselves,” the paper’s student editor, Gillian McGoldrick, told MTV News.”

– MTV News, ‘Redskin’ Is Officially An Offensive Racial Slur According To The Dictionary And Anyone Else With Good Taste.