It’s 2017, and Chief Wahoo still exists.
The famous logo of the Cleveland Indians gets its face plastered all over downtown Cleveland in the spring until the wind rips it away and leaves it in pieces in November.
In 1947, Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck hired the J.F Novak company to design the Cleveland Indians logo and created a yellow skin cartoon with a stereotypical Native American nose. About five years later, yellow skin turned into red skin, a toothy smile and a smaller nose.
Since the 1970’s, Native Americans have protested to have this logo removed, but team owners have tried to assure them that the logo is simply just to honor their heritage, not to offend them.
But if you wanted to honor them, why not respect them?
If Native Americans have been protesting for this long, the message should be received that Native Americans don’t find this logo appealing. And why should they?
Just like how blackface is acknowledged as a racist offense, exploiting Native American culture should have the same repercussions. The Cleveland Indians aren’t the only team to receive backlash from their community.
The Washington Redskins haven’t been off the hook. Just like the Cleveland Indians, there have been continuous protests outside of their stadium, hoping they’ll change their name and logo.
Most people think the majority of the country thinks we’re okay with these racist stereotypes because of a poll that was taken in 2004 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in 2004, but this poll has an incredible amount of flaws.
Most of the participants were contacted by phone lines, which in 2004, most houses were getting rid of. Not to mention that 51% of Native Americans that were living on reservations didn’t own a landline.
So if you weren’t asking the majority of Native Americans, who were you asking?
Another oversight in this poll is the wording of the questions that were asked. For example, one of the questions was “The professional football team in Washington Redskins. As a Native American, do you find that name offensive or doesn’t it bother you?”
This question double loaded. Some people could be uncomfortable with the logo, not be completely offended by it, and vice versa. To run a poll correctly, questions like these would want to be avoided.
A good example of a poll that should be used in this conservation is the poll taken in 2013 conducted by the Oneida Nation, where 44% of the people weren’t comfortable with the idea of a football team being labeled as the “Washington Redskins” when they saw the clean-cut dictionary definition. 66% also said that Dan Snyder, a majority owner of the Redskins, shouldn’t say the racial slur in the face of a Native American.
So why is it OK to put it on merchandise, a football stadium, and all over tv?
Native Americans have had a hard time living in their homeland. From having it snatched away from European settlers, to having oil pipelines burst on their reservations, Native Americans haven’t been respected on land that belongs to them.
This step may be a small step towards to beginning to gain the admiration that they deserve, but it could be a start.
Stop speaking over minorities. The sooner we listen, the quicker we can fix relations that have been long overdue.