Columnist Peter King announced Friday that he no longer will refer to Washington’s NFL team as the Redskins.

That was the message he delivered in a column posted to his new site.

“All I can say is, you grow in your business, and you grow as a person, and you try to always be open to ideas and to what others are thinking,” King writes. He says he’s not preaching.

King said he wanted to ban “Redskins” entirely from his site but decided against it, because “I felt after some thought that it’s not my place to order people who I work with to do something they may not be comfortable doing.” Now it’s up to his individual writers to decide.

“Here’s what it came down to for me: Did I want to be part of a culture that uses a term that many in society view as a racial epithet?” King writes. “The answer kept coming back no — and now that I have been charged to run a website, I thought I would finally do what felt right to me.”

In his anti-Redskins declaration, King notes that “the highly respected American Indian Movement” condemns the use of Redskins. That same organization also condemns the use of Kansas City’s team nickname, the Chiefs, which is still used by King and his site.

Earlier this week, the Oneida Indian Nation announced plans to run radio ads in the Washington market urging a name change. Redskins owner Daniel Snyder and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell have both defended the team’s name.