One Bethesda, Md., school is taking a stand against the Washington, D.C., NFL team’s racist name and has banned all children from preschool to eighth grade from wearing apparel with the team’s logo and name on it.
“The term ‘redskin’ is a racial slur. Its use, whether intentional or not, can be deeply insulting and offensive,” the head of the Green Acres School, Neal Brown, wrote in a letter viewed by Yahoo! Sports.
“It is a term that demeans a group of people. Similarly, the team’s logo also can reasonably be viewed as racially demeaning. At best, the image is an ethnic stereotype that promotes cultural misunderstanding; at worst, it is intensely derogatory,” he wrote.
The independent school is about 25 miles north of the FedEx stadium, where Washington plays its home games, and is the first in the area to ban students from wearing the apparel.
Brown’s letter noted that the issue was first raised by third-grade students, because third-grade students have a pretty good moral compass, during a class session on Native Americans. The issue was raised again during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration as students in the third and sixth grades discussed sports team logos. Yahoo! notes that the school discussed the issue and decided to ban clothing that depicts racially insensitive images like those of Washington’s team.
“According to the Green Acres website, it was the first racially integrated school in Montgomery County, Md., founded in 1934 ‘by parents who wanted to develop in their children a love of learning, a strong sense of intrinsic motivation, and a deep commitment to social justice,’” Yahoo! reports.
Read more at Yahoo! Sports.