As the admin of the White Mountains Red-lining Facebook group, I had a discussion thread up about this very topic for a few days, before shutting it down.
Here is a link to the thread, publicly viewable. It will become private the afternoon of March 5, so peruse while you can. I've decided to take the group private, to prevent any material posted from being used as a weapon against members, or the Grid Trust (the maintainers/benefactors of the list).
For a bit of backstory, I was contacted about 2 weeks ago by a member, asking if the question could be posed to the group, about changing the name of this racist term. I explained what we as a group were about, hiking all the trails, and saw no need to change the name of the game, as there was no connotation linking it with the other meaning. I also demurred to the Grid Trust, as when it really comes down to it, I'm just the guy who created the group, one who has no control over the name of the game. Long story short, I was accused of "passing the buck" to the Grid Trust, abusing my role as group admin, and "actively perpetuating racism in the hiking community". Instead of arguing with this individual, I agreed to allow a thread on the topic, which they said they'd post in a couple of days. 10 days passed, and I honestly felt a bit held hostage, like the hammer was going to drop at any time, on my group. An email forwarded to me from another individual, detailed that the writer of the link in the OP, was going to release the linked article, and "didn't want anyone to be blindsided". It read like a thinly veiled threat, at best. You can muddle through the thread to see how the discussion unfolded.
The whole thread is moot at this point. This morning, the Grid Trust informed me that White Mountains Red-lining, will now be called "Hiking/Tracing the White Mountain Trails", and will be updating their website accordingly. I have since updated everything related to the group, with this nomenclature. I'd like to point out, that nowhere on the page, was anything that would have been remotely construed as racist. Our purpose was clearly described, naming was hyphenated "Red-lining" not "redlining", and the 48x12.com page for the activity was likewise linked. Not sure there's much else I personally could have done. Now that the name is no longer the issue, we can get back to the task at hand, being out in the woods, hiking the trails, and not worrying about things like this.
