Origin of word "redskin"

Fri May 27 17:33:25 UTC 2005

It seems unlikely to me that when James Fenimore Cooper decided to call his novel _The Redskins_, he was simmering with an animus against Native Americans.

Native Americans are not red, but whites and blacks are not white or black either.  Nor are East Asians "yellow" - a word whose later associations now make its use as a neutral term (like white or black) quite impossible. And of course, "people of color" is politically correct, whereas "colored people" is proscribed. Except in the name of the NAACP. "Brown-skinned people" (who come in all shades of brown) is quite acceptable, but "red-skinned,"  "yellow-skinned" and "white-skinned people" sound invidious and bizarre.

"Negro" was normal and preferred until the baseless [sic] suspicion proliferated (first, I believe, in the media and on campus) that it was "really" just another form of that other "N" word.  If memory serves, another objection was that "negro/-a" in Spanish is an adjective, and it is demeaning and racist to refer to human beings "as an adjective."

Beverly's observation that American Indians prefer to be called "Indians," rather than "Native Americans," at the very moment that highly educated professional "thinkers" claim that the reverse should be true, is beautifully instructive.

It's also amazing to me that some persons with training in linguistics will insist (often with condescension and barely disguised scorn) that certain lexical items are offensive by nature or etymology, and must be "chopped from the language" (as a TV series once said) and then laugh with their introductory students about the folly of "essentialism."

JL

David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: David Bowie
Subject: Re: Origin of word "redskin"
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From: Laurence Horn
> Ron Butters wrote:

>> David Barnhart and I both worked on the history and present meaning
>> of "redskin." Except as a term applied to peanuts, fire hoses,
>> motorcycles, and the Washington, DC, football team, the term is
>> actually pretty much obsolete today.

> Obsolete, perhaps, but still functional when needed as a slur. If it
> were really obsolete, the various "dirty redskin" hits on google
> wouldn't be understood...

I'm not sure--as i still remember learning in my one sociolinguistics
(though it wasn't called that) class as an undergrad, you can turn *any*
word into an insult if you tried hard enough. After all, "dirty Native
American" would, i think, still come across as an insult.

> ...(Their source does not appear to be Cowboys or Giants fans.) And
> this in turn makes me wonder about the non-derogatory claim of the
> federal court below. No, "a redskin family moved into my
> neighborhood" wouldn't be heard, but that would be the wrong
> register, as would "The underrepresented minorities in the student
> body include 8% African-Americans, 7% Hispanics, and 0.5% Redskins".
> "Injun" is also obsolete, but would the "Oklahoma Injuns" be
> acceptable?

Jonathan Lighter (sp?) asked what percentage of referred-to ethnic group here> find the term "Redskin" derogatory--and
the answer, as borne out by repeated polls, is "not very much at all".

Now, this of course leads to the question of whether a word's history
(since it clearly *was* offensive, including presumably to a large
proportion of Native Americans, at some point in the past) should be
taken into account when using it nowadays.

The usual reaction of overly-knowledgable-in-language types like those
of us on this list, when asked whether the history of a word makes any
difference in its current use, is "no"--except when it comes to a
hot-button issue like ethnic labelling. I do wonder why.

(Of course, i grew up in the DC area, so maybe i'm biased--but my
professional sport of choice to watch was always hockey, not football,
so i can still claim *some* detachment.)

It's worth noting that a somewhat parallel case, though not involving
ethnic labelling, goes on in relation to The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, and gets debated (with some vehemence) among members
of that church. The better-known term "Mormon" to refer to the church
and to its members clearly began as a pejorative term, and some members
of that church hold that the term should be avoided because of that
history. Other members of that church (full disclosure: including me)
hold that it's not an insult any more, and so can be used freely.

In my experience/observation, though, those members of that church who
hold that "Mormon" should be avoided as historically an offensive term
are in the minority, though they do include a high proportion of the
people in the church's leadership/power structure.

Seems a pretty decent parallel to the "Redskin" case, though without
involving the ethnicity issue. Therefore, i have to wonder if my
suspicions are right, and it really is a sensitivity to ethnic labelling
and not a sensitivity to the history of pejoratives that have been
bleached--so, questions: Do those who believe that "Redskin" should be
avoided (presumably using "Native American" or somesuch) also hold that
"Mormon Church" should be avoided (using "The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints")?

If yes, does this mean that we should avoid *all* terms that have been
historically pejorative? (And how would we know what they all are?) If
not, then why the difference?

David, who never heard that "Redskin" was offensive until college
--
David Bowie http://pmpkn.net/lx
Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

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