Redskin (slang)
"Redskin" is a slang term referring to Native Americans in the United States. In modern dictionaries of American English it is labeled "usually offensive", "disparaging", "insulting", and "taboo".
The origin of the term is debated, in particular whether the use of "red" referred to skin color or the use of pigments by certain
tribes, and also whether the term was applied to natives by Europeans or came from language natives used to refer to themselves. Professor Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz states that the settlers were paid bounties and they gave a name to the mutilated and bloody corpses they left in the wake of scalp hunts: redskins. Whatever its
origins in the colonial period, many argue that "redskin" underwent a process of pejoration due to the increasingly disparaging use of the term through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Although the term has almost disappeared from common use, it remains as the name of many sports teams, most prominently the Washington Redskins, and the term's meaning has been a significant point of controversy.
