OT: Cleveland Indians to retire Chief Wahoo logo
It was just announced that Cleveland will be retiring the Chief Wahoo logo starting in 2019. Always an interesting topic of debate, especially with Dan Snyder seeming so unwilling to bend on a mascot/name that seems even more offensive than Cleveland's.
Since they're a division rival of Detroit's, we see them quite a bit each season, and it defintely seems that they've already been de-emphasizing Chief Wahoo in recent years, with the block 'C' logo becoming more prominent on their caps and uniforms.
Thought this might be of interest to some of the baseball fans on the board.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/sports/baseball/cleveland-indians-chief-wahoo-logo.html
January 29th, 2018 at 2:10 PM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 2:38 PM ^
Obviously the right move but that "C" logo is fuckin terrible. They gotta come up wtih something better than that.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:49 PM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 3:27 PM ^
by a minor league team in connecticut.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:06 PM ^
I actually really like the simple C.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:09 PM ^
Already have a simple C
January 29th, 2018 at 3:40 PM ^
I believe it's called "Basic C".
January 29th, 2018 at 4:38 PM ^
The red C is dull as toast, that's true. I have bought some Indians gear recently but avoided the chief on principle. This is a gradual phase-out. People will still wear it, but I'm glad they won't produce any more.
If they ditch the team name they should resurrect Spiders. The tough part is that the final Spiders team (1899) was historically bad, having been gutted by their owners when they moved all the good players to their other NL team, the St. Louis Browns.
They could do all kinds of fun marketing with Spider mascots. And I can't think of any other teams with that mascot except the University of Richmond, so there wouldn't be any confusion.
January 29th, 2018 at 5:33 PM ^
In fact I like their kits quite a bit. Of course as a Tiger fan of really doesn't matter too much to me.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:11 PM ^
It was only a matter of time. I really thought that the Redskins would've been the first to cave though
January 29th, 2018 at 2:12 PM ^
Nah, Dan Snyder is too tone-deaf to care that much. And Manefred was able to dangle the All-Star game as collateral to get the change made.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:17 PM ^
If the organization actually thought it needed retiring they wouldn't be giving a racist caricature a season-long send-off.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:19 PM ^
Haha yeah, good point. But to be fair, they probably already had the apparel line for the 2018 season in the pipeline or already distributed though.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:23 PM ^
They're still gonna be selling merch with the logo in the stadium in 2019, so it's not even a complete discontinuation, it's just the uniforms and artwork around the stadium.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:14 PM ^
...MLB's jerseys (currently Majestic) and undershirt-type things (currently Nike) both switch over to Under Armour. May have given the Indians/MLB a natural breaking point, too.
January 29th, 2018 at 4:48 PM ^
One problem, it's not a racist caricature.
January 29th, 2018 at 6:32 PM ^
This isn't a racist caricature?
Do explain.
January 29th, 2018 at 11:26 PM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 11:24 PM ^
I'm part indian and have no problem with it.
February 6th, 2018 at 10:18 AM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 2:22 PM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 2:41 PM ^
What about the Chicago Blackhawks?
January 29th, 2018 at 2:51 PM ^
Black Hawk was a person, not a tribe. And he was a hero to many - including whites - by the end of his life. That combined with the non-caricature that is the above image make me think it's not a problem, though I'm open to other arguments.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:55 PM ^
I went to Chippew Valley High School and we used this logo on some of our spirit wear.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:25 PM ^
I've also not heard nearly the outcry about this logo compared to others.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:36 PM ^
Here's an article touching on the topic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/blackhawks-re…
January 29th, 2018 at 2:56 PM ^
I think your meter is off if you cannot tell the difference between the Blackhawks logo and literally something called Chief Wahoo.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:13 PM ^
Chief Blackhawk seems a respectable representation of an Indian chief. The other looks like a step n' fetchit Injun. Maybe the single most racist logo anywhere.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:22 PM ^
just asking what others think. I totally agree there is a big difference between Cleveland and Chicago logos.
I also think that many schools do a good job honoring Native Americans. Every school I went to K through HS was named after a tribe.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:31 PM ^
Agreed. There is a right and a wrong way to do it.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:32 PM ^
I am a white dude, so my opinion on this is somewhat meaningless, but to me, the Blackhawks logo is not overtly offensive. The logo appears to me to be trying to portray an actual image of the man known as "Black Hawk", the Saux American Indian war chief.
"The Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League indirectly derive their name from Black Hawk. Their first owner, Frederic McLaughlin, was a commander with the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 86th Infantry Division during World War I, nicknamed the "Black Hawk Division" after the war leader. McLaughlin named the hockey team in honor of his military unit."
IMO, only a member of the Saux tribe is really qualified to say how the image makes them feel.
January 29th, 2018 at 10:58 PM ^
January 30th, 2018 at 5:59 AM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 2:44 PM ^
I don't know much about Snyder so your statement may be very true.
One other perspective: The Indians are not changing their team name. They are removing the use of a mascot. They will still be the Cleveland Indians. As has already been pointed out, they had started using Chief Wahoo less and less over the past couple years.
In the case of Washington, you would need to rename the whole team. All of their appareal would be significantly changed.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:11 PM ^
why do you keep coming back?
January 29th, 2018 at 3:20 PM ^
There was no way he was going to change the name. As long as 90K pack the stadium, he's not changing anything.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:11 PM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 2:14 PM ^
PC SNOWFLAKE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!!!
January 29th, 2018 at 2:14 PM ^
man, that is a racist AF logo
January 29th, 2018 at 2:18 PM ^
Yeah, I always thought so, too. They seemed to fly under the radar though because all the heat was on the Redskins.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:15 PM ^
o/u on how long it takes to change the team name also? I'm guessing way longer than it should be
January 29th, 2018 at 2:31 PM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 2:35 PM ^
I would definitely consider it offensive if I was labeled a senator in this day and age, amirite?
January 29th, 2018 at 2:37 PM ^
Strong with this one the false equivalence is.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:43 PM ^
I don't understand how Patriots or Mariners or Brewers are offensive. Same with most of the others. Redskins is definitely offensive, Indians a bit less so but still makes a mascot out of an entire race of people. I think that's a bit different from those other examples.
January 29th, 2018 at 2:57 PM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 3:12 PM ^
Celtics is no different than Indians
There is a key difference between having a white person name his team after other white people (Celtics), and having a white person name his team after non-white people (Indians). Appropriating someone else's ethnic group for your own purposes is touchy, to say the least. And here we are talking about people who were conquered, marginalized and not even granted U.S. citizenship until the 1920s.
Having a logo like Chief Wahoo doesn't help, either.
January 30th, 2018 at 6:05 AM ^
January 29th, 2018 at 3:13 PM ^
Yeah but Canucks is a term for Canadians. And they're Canadians and they use that term, not in a derogatory way. They didn't pick an insulting name for themselves. They might as well be the Vancouver Canadians (as opposed to Canadiens I suppose). Its basically the same thing as the Yankees, they might as well be the New York Americans. People abroad use the term derisively but in America its not a negative term. There's nothing wrong with Canucks or Yankees.
Celtics approaches racial territory a little but its not as bad because the logo, while silly, isn't quite as caricaturish. And if I recall correctly, the team's origins grew out of Irish athletic clubs in Boston, which of course has a large Irish population. As an Irishman myself, I'm not that crazy about the idea of the Fightin' Irish. But again, this grew out of the student body at ND which was heavily Irish back in the day (and still is).
The Indians and the Redskins, as far as I know, were clubs founded by white people. If they were originally started by actual Native Americans who chose the name to reflect their ethnicity or whatever, then maybe it would be a little more palatable. But it's different if another ethnic/racial group chooses to use it, especially in a negative-stereotypical way to represent themselves.
January 29th, 2018 at 3:21 PM ^
In the case of the Canadiens, they were specifically founded as a club for French-speaking players, as English speakers in Montreal already had a team (the Maroons).