https://www.yahoo.com/sports/cleveland-indians-remove-chief-wahoo-uniforms-series-toronto-050507666.html 

a day that will live in infamy.

I heard he was banned... 😟

playing in uniforms completely devoid of the racist caricature the team has used as a logo since 1951.

According to who..?? Are the people calling this racist even Indians..?? 😕

My college mascot was the Chiefs.
It is now the Riverhawks.

It was changed because it was "racist".
A native American chief with full head dress was our logo.
It's now a cartoon fictional bird.

I watched the protests.
Even Elizabeth Warren wasn't there.
It was other people being offended FOR the Indians that created the controversy.

"We shouldn't use depictions of sacred warriors in sports"
that was the battle cry.
By people who obviously have never been to a casino in Connecticut.


If Cleveland wants to change the mascot, fine. It was kinda hokey anyhow.
But I'm sick of hearing about how the "history" somehow taints today's meaning.

The cartoon indian began as a racist joke? Fine.
Today it meant "Cleveland's MLB team". Nothing more. Nothing less.

If we have to default to the original intent then we should be able to use swastika logo's because the nazi's didn't invent them, they merely adopted them.

It's a slippery slope.

But in the mean time, kudos to Cleveland.
Maybe they can get a real logo now.
Like a flying elvis...

Poor teedubbya

They should use a starfish and call themselves the Cleveland Anus's...

Definitely has racist roots, but over time, those who remember the actually racist roots are few and far between.

There are many logos that could be considered offensive.

Celtics, little fat bellied Irish guy puffing a pipe and only has one eye open, clearly closed because he was in a drunken fight.

Vikings... Glorifying a murderous civilization of the past... think Raiders, Pirates, etc...

Redskins obviously.

With that, I'm not offended by any of them, though I can see why some people are. I also understand the unwillingness to break from a brand that took decades to build as it could end up in lost revenue and a long term strategy has to be put in place to move away from it... ultimately it's about money at this point.

Also I understand people's inherent nature to discriminate. People have an instinctive nature to group up into packs based on similarities and a genetically ingrained "us vs them" mentality. This truth becomes painfully obvious to anyone who is of mixed races.

In college, I got a job in a diversity department. Even though we associated with each other, it was kinda funny watching how people broke up into their little sub-packs (I didn't really fit in with any of them, so I didn't hang out with them much outside of school). Foreign Hispanics tended to congregated together, American Hispanics did the same. Even though the Blacks were in the same office, there were only a couple who would hang out with the general population. The Natives tended to stick together, same with the Indians from India, Arabs, etc...

Was funny, because there were a bunch of Hispanic chicks trying to hook me up with this Native lady (who was way older than me by the way) and I simply wasn't attracted to her. They were hell bent on it. Then after a while, they are all like... you're just superficial. Then one of the loudest of the bunch brings her boyfriend in one day, he was a short, buff Mexican dude... it's like ok, what ever (she wasn't even that good looking, had a decent azz, but that's about it). Moral of that story is, people break up into packs and discriminate... it's what we do. It's probably the reason we're the only human like hominid that still exists... We killed the rest.

So I would say as a civilization, we've come a long way... but too many people believe that people are all nice and cuddly by default and discrimination is a learned behavior... that's simply not true, we all do it by default.. I think the sooner that people accept that our nature is to discriminate and accept that it takes work and effort to change that in the individual, the faster we can advance as a society. Logos are simply a reflection of who we are as a species... the most dominant, vile predator known to ever exist on this planet.

That's why I hang with puppy-dogs... 😟

everyone has an anus... no one can get upset about the anus logo...

It seems to me that those who yell discrimination the loudest have learned to discriminate at an entirely higher level than those labeled as a racist, homophobe and etc.

🌫

The other side is always louder, if it wasn't true, then nobody would have to turn their volume up.

Mine goes to 11... 😟

uranus does?

Stanford University went through a similar transition back in the early 70s ... after deciding to scrap the "Indians" name, the administration let the students vote on what it should be changed to ... students voted to become the "Trees" (think large fir tree contained in the Stanford "S" ) ... the admins didn't want to be the "Trees", so they over-ruled the students and became the "Cardinal" ... not the bird, but the name of the color ...

I thought it was an over-reaction then and still do ... but, these days, over-reaction is big business ... it's seen everywhere and in all aspects of life ... and if all the various cats and birds could express themselves, there'd be a lot of teams whose nicknames would be the name of a color ... and those in charge at Stanford might even have a softening of hearts toward being called the "Trees" ...

tw and I have had a running joke for a few years now about Chief Wahoo...
he even sent me a MLB Official Yarmulkah with the logo on it, friggin' hysterical.

So, I do not feel it is meant as disrespect to name your team(s) after Vikings, or Pirates, or even Chiefs/Indians in that the namers were thinking of the connotation of bravery and fierceness, people who would fight to the end with honor...the positive stuff.

Just two comments to put under the "but":

But-Races aren't pets, some members of those groups feel being mascots dehumanizes them in a way that allows others to never take them seriously as full humans. I've not felt that way, but so far there has not been a Pro team called The New York Jews.

But-That Wahoo guy could not be further removed from a Chief to be admired...he looks like a drunken grinning red idiot. Lovable, yes. Dehumanized and not a serious human, also yes.

I don't imagine it's be the New York Jews...

I sorta suspect it'd be the cour d'laine Idaho media controlling Jews... A local feeder team....

TW never sent me a MLB Official Yarmulkah with the logo on it... 😞

The high school in Pekin Illinois used to be called "The Chinks". They changed it but you can still buy "Chinks" gear.




ROR

I'm Irish/Cherokee........I don't have a problem with either and I think people that do have way too much **** ing time on their hands with nothing better to do than b1tch.

guess I'd settle for that as long as the logo was some hot Israeli chick.