Editorial: New year and new name for Washington team

The name “Redskins” was given to a National Football League team in Boston, via an extraordinary series of events, in 1933. It should be retired, following another series of extraordinary events, in 2014.

As the Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont recounted, the team now known as the Washington Redskins was in Boston from 1932 to 1936. It originally shared the Boston Braves name with the National League baseball team, and played at Braves Field. In 1933, however, it moved to Fenway Park. A new name was in order. “Redskins” would continue the Native American theme of the previous name and, by some accounts, promote the team’s coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, who was believed to be Native American. The owner who made the change, George Preston Marshall, was an avowed racist, opposing desegregation, but that doesn’t seem to have figured into the name change: He apparently saw “Redskins” as a positive term.

Its history, however, is far from unambiguously positive. Unlike “Braves” or “Chiefs” or “Indians,” the term “Redskins” refers to skin color. It was widely understood to be derogatory — a way of classifying people by race. It wasn’t always meant as a slur, however, and some Native Americans ended up embracing the term. Even today, some high schools on Indian reservations use the name “Redskins,” and, in the National Annenberg Election Survey of 2004, 90 percent of self-identified Native Americans said they were not offended by the Washington Redskins