Origin of word "redskin"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:13 AM -0400 5/27/05, David Bowie wrote:
>From:    Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>Ron Butters wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>>>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.

Doesn't mean it's equally easy to do so.  Compare for example

Those lousy {kikes/yids/Hebes/Jews/Jewish people}
That miserable {cunt/broad/woman/lady}
That filthy {spic/Mexican/Hispanic-American}
Those creepy {fags/homosexuals/gay men}

the labels on the left are insults without the adjectives, the ones
on the right--no matter how hard you try, and how strong the
adjective used--seem a bit odd as insults for various reasons, not
least the register clash.

>  After all, "dirty Native
>American" would, i think, still come across as an insult.

For me it would be a feeble and failed insult (as in the examples on
the right in the above groups), if only because of the register
clash.  Among other things, "Native American" has no intrinsic
emotive content, while Redskin does.  If "Native American" is taken
to a p.c. substitution (I don't really feel comfortably using "p.c."
as an unanalyzed neutral linguistic label, but I won't pursue that
here) or euphemism, this would explain it; there would be an apparent
conflict in motives.  "Indian" is roughly like "Jew" in this respect.

>>...(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 <insert name of the
>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?

OK, I'm clearly in the minority here on this, but I'd argue there is
a difference, and I'm not invoking any version of what Mill called
the etymological fallacy, that a word really does "mean" what it once
meant, so once a pejorative, always a pejorative.  "Mormon", like
"Shaker" and "Quaker", and probably a lot of other religious and
ethnic labels, may well have originated as a mocking out-group term,
but each has long since achieved neutrality and is so used by most
speakers, I'd wager.  I would be very skeptical that you provide
evidence at any point in history for a similar neutral use of
"Redskin" (with or without capitalization) as the unmarked label for
American Indians/Native Americans.  So I just don't see the parallel
between "redskin" and "Mormon" that you (and apparently others on the
list) do.

Larry