Redskins name is ‘offensive,’ Holder says

ABC News | ABC Sports News

Attorney General Eric Holder is among those who believe the Washington Redskins football team should change its name, he said during an interview Sunday with ABC News.

{mosads}“I think the name ought to be changed,” Holder said. “I think it is an offensive name. And the Redskins are … a team with a storied history that has huge amounts of support in Washington, D.C. And I think in the 21st Century, they could increase their fan base, increase their level of support if they did something that is so, from my perspective, so obviously right.”

Holder is not the first Cabinet secretary to advocate for a name change for the franchise. When he was asked about Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racist comments during an event in April, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made reference to his belief that the team should change its name.

“Here in Washington we have the Washington Redskins. Is that name appropriate for a professional football team?” Duncan asked. “I don’t think it is. We should challenge the status quo right here in Washington.”

And President Obama has said that if he owned the team, he’d consider changing the name.

“If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team — even if it had a storied history — that was offending a sizeable group of people, I’d think about changing it,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Following Obama’s comment, Lanny Davis, a columnist for The Hill and a Redskins employee, said Obama had “better things to worry about” than the team’s name.

“President Obama has better things to worry about, but he should look at the Chicago Blackhawks who won the Stanley Cup and he’s never said a word about them,” Davis told Fox News.