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The Pigskins Shame Spiral is an occasional feature tracking developments related to the name of D.C.’s beloved football team.
Who: The Boston Globe editorial board.
Change the name? Yes. “A new name would be seen as a symbol of magnanimity and recognition of historic wrongs, not capitulation,” the paper’s editorial board wrote in a piece published over the weekend.
Why? “The exploitation, prejudice, stereotyping, and betrayal of Native Americans by the US government and many other Americans is encoded in the term Redskins, however much it has grown to mean something different on the football field.”
Shame Spiral rating: SMH.The Boston paper did take ownership for its city actually giving the team its offensive name back in 1933, and since Beantown has nothing to do with the team anymore, a strongly worded editorial is a nice gesture. But it’s 2014. What took the Globe so long to take this now-common stance in the media world? If the paper wanted a chance at our coveted Middle Finger ranking, it should have banned the name from its pages.