Baseball Fever: Race and the Cleveland Indians
Note from CVK: This post was written during the American League Championships
by Racialicious guest contributor Beth Dean
The past two weeks my entire office has been abuzz with baseball talk. Indians pennants hang on cubes, everyone has their Indians shirts on. The prize in a contest last week was tickets to tonight’s game. It’s been really nice to see people excited about Cleveland. Let’s be honest, we get crapped on a lot.
We’re always at the top of national surveys on violence and poverty levels. People go out of their way to tell us what a crappy city and industrial wasteland we live in. I don’t even care that much about baseball, but it’s hard not to get caught up in all this, and frankly I think Cleveland could use a win, because Cleveland never wins anything else.
But there’s an elephant in the room, and his name is Chief Wahoo. I’m not surprised with all the recent Cleveland talk in the news, that people are beginning to bring up race, and rightly so. Our mascot is a giant racist caricature. Somewhere along the lines, we got a little more embarrassed of ourselves and introduced Slyder. I suppose after the atrocity of Chief Wahoo, we deserve a ridiculous muppet for a mascot. But the problem is we never got rid of the Chief. We took him off most of our hats (not the ones the players wear), but he’s still on everything else.
To make matters worse, we have our fans going to games in red face. Red face! A humble suggestion baseball fans: if you would like to show your support, perhaps paint your face red and blue, because they’re both team colors.
I understand it’s hard to change overnight. But our football team packed up and left in the night, why can’t we change our baseball team? People hate Cleveland enough as it is, do they need to think we’re all racist rednecks too? Part of the problem, and the reason the Chief hasn’t been completely eradicated, is because Cleveland isn’t racist. Nope. There’s a difference between genuine racism and ignorance. It’s not an excuse, and it’s still awful, but most people here don’t even realize how offensive he is. They don’t even realize how offensive the name Indians is.
I didn’t even know until I was in high school and took a Canadian friend to visit the city. It happened to be during a baseball game. She was aghast. (I should note, Canadians are much more attune to their indigenous peoples than we are.) She couldn’t believe we had a team not only so blatantly racist, but that the city was crawling with people perpetuating this big red grinning face. Wahoo merchandise was everywhere. She said in Canada, Wahoo is a hideous racial slur. Well it is here too, we just don’t know it.
To quote King Kaufman from Salon:
The Cleveland Indians are not about to throw 90 years of brand loyalty down the dumper when they’re on an upswing between the lines and at the box office.
But is it too much to ask that outrageously racist caricatures of peoples on whom this country has perpetrated genocide be retired? The answer is no, it’s not too much to ask.
It should have been done a long time ago.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Anonymous wrote:
I know a lot of Red Sox fans; sad to say many of them, in their loyalty to the BoSox, went around saying things like “Kill the Injuns” and “Slaughter the Indians” in regards to the games last week. Do I think these fans actually hate American Indians? No. I think a few didn’t care, and most simply didn’t understand what was wrong with saying that type of thing.
Injuns. Seriously guys?
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 7:10 am ¶
Sudy wrote:
THANK YOU FOR THIS POST!
Something that actually makes sense.
Retire it. Retire it.
C’mon Cleveland. Seriously. You can be classy without a pennant too.
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 8:33 am ¶
RakuMon wrote:
More of a football fan than a baseball one, but since I live near Washington, DC but I could never root for the home team (the Redskins) because of the obviously offensive nature of the name and mascot.
Washington Post writer and host of ESPN’s PTI Tony Kornheiser had the best solution. Since Washington will never give up the “Redskins” moniker, they should just replace the logo on their helmets with a potato.
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 9:02 am ¶
Roger Green wrote:
Yeah, as much as Cleveland could have used a sports winner, I couldn’t root for their MLB team as long as they have that damnable logo. I’m not crazy about the name of the team either, but the logo’s gotta go NOW.
http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/2007/10/hello-its-me.html
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 9:14 am ¶
Mireille wrote:
RakuMon: I live outside DC too (it seems a lot of people who read this blog do) and that name ALWAYS bothered me.
I take issue with using ethnic groups as mascots in general, this includes the Vikings and the Celtics. It turns whole groups of people into caricatures and branded merch and trivializes their complex histories. Honestly, wouldn’t people be up in arms if there were the San Fran “Chinks” or the Atlanta “Emancipated Share Croppers”? It’s the same. damn. thing.
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 12:26 pm ¶
Rob Schmidt wrote:
Let’s note that while nooses and blackface parties are occasional events, sports team mascots are broadcast on national TV and seen by millions of people throughout the year. These stereotypical names and images are arguably one of the worst racial problems we have, if not THE worst.
See http://www.bluecorncomics.com/mascots.htm for more on mascots and http://www.bluecorncomics.com/wahoo.htm for more on Chief Wahoo.
Also, don’t forget to vote for my 10 Questions video if you haven’t already:
http://www.racialicious.com/2007/10/22/10-questions-should-we-ban-american-indian-mascots
Posted 26 Oct 2007 at 2:28 pm ¶
bg wrote:
Maybe the recent attention given Boston’s Jacoby Ellsbury, (a Navajo), in helping America get a free taco, while a surreal storyline in itself, may help bring more pressure to bear on these kind of sports logos.
http://www.racialicious.com/2007/10/26/baseball-fever-race-and-the-cleveland-indians/
Posted 27 Oct 2007 at 1:24 am ¶
bdsista wrote:
I too am from the DC area and sent an email to the entire staff of my school when it was team jersey day of spirit week to remind them that the R word to native people means the same thing as the N-word to black people, still my principal wore his superbowl shirt! I think the Cleveland mascot is worse. I call him the “jigaboo indian” If he had an afro or a yarmulke folks would be burning stuff down. It’s time to get rid the racist caricatures. Why does it always take violence to force people to change?
Posted 27 Oct 2007 at 8:48 am ¶
Kenny wrote:
I used to work at Jacobs field and the team hat was part of the uniform.One day I got into a debate with one of my White co-workers about it and he said it was to honor the Natives. I asked him why do we wear it after they said they do not feel honored and he was stumped.I started to wear my price badge over Wahoo to cover up his big red grinning face .
Posted 27 Oct 2007 at 9:53 am ¶
Angela wrote:
I’m on the bandwagon for this. Stereotypes and mocking images of Native Americans remain prevalent because Native Americans aren’t as “in your face” as Black Americans. Not to make excuses, but I feel that you can’t fight for your own culture and ignore others. So what can we do to raise awareness on this topic?
Posted 27 Oct 2007 at 5:14 pm ¶
SolShine7 wrote:
I never supported any of those teams with Native American mascots. It’s not right.
Posted 28 Oct 2007 at 12:23 pm ¶