Bah!  I’m Irish and the Notre Dame mascot is far more defamatory than is Chief Wahoo, but it’s fun and this is sports for Pete’s sake.  People need to get a life, or realize how good their lives must be that they have the time and energy and wherewithal to worry about cartoon mascots of sports teams.

Jacob—if you read the whole post you’ll realize that neither the Frowns’ nor I am condoning it.  We’re simply acknowledging that there are many people who are Indians fans who either don’t think about the racist implications of Wahoo or who may acknowledge it as falling into some “historical exceptions” clause and therefore less offensive somehow. Whether such a position is an intellectually valid one or not is irrelevant.  These are the people—good fans who support the team—that the Indians have to consider when making changes.

The response is a simple one: acknowledge that your opponents in this (and any) debate are not monsters and that, though you may find their reasoning flawed, they do not.  That, in order to build a positive consensus towards positive change, it’s better to be inclusive than exclusive.

I don’t see the problem in that.  More importantly, I don’t see how doing that makes getting rid of Wahoo any harder.  Indeed, I think it would make it much, much easier.

Craig - what i am saying is, there should be no debate. The “good people” you reference are casual racists, whether they like it or not,  and the fact that their feelings need to be acknowledged and assuaged only goes to show how far American society has yet to go before the evils of racism are purged. They are not monsters, they are just wrong, and engaging them in discussion will only serve to lengthen the amount of time that this degrading image can continue to be paraded across America’s televisions.

Sabertooth - tell me when the American Government and people carried out a concerted effort towards a genocide of the Irish, and then your comparison will hold water.

I think it can be pretty tedious when folks insist that an analogy must provide exact symmetry in order to “hold water.”

Certainly the behavior of the early American gov’t towards America’s natives was ugly and heinous and shameful. But this does not mean that the modern standard for being offended by stereotypes must include a component of genocide. That’s just silly.

I’ve thought that the Wahoo symbol is ugly and embarassing to Indians fans for some time, and that it ought to go. But I still stand comfortably with all the folks who think we might be better-served if Americans spent less time being offended and getting all worked up about symbols and word choices. In lieu of that,we could used spend all that saved time being offended by harmful actions. Just a thought from someone who sadly lacks an endless reservoir of both outrage _and_ time to spend feeling outraged.

In general, I find rage to be a an expensive and unreliable form of mental fuel.

But if the ND mascot is in fact a leprechaun, which is a mythical creature, then I think that’s a pretty good counterargument.

kranky kritter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_Leprechaun

“The ‘good people’ you reference are casual racists”

This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that does nothing to move the discussion forward.  We all have to understand that these symbols have different meanings to different people and any argument that boils down to, “You’re racist because I say you are”  is a nonstarter.

The bottom line is that many people view Chief Wahoo as nothing more than a stupid logo, one that carries more association to a baseball team than to the Native Americans that it ostensibly represents.

It is a freakin’ CARTOON!  I’m a white guy and look nothing like Homer Simpson and as a child I looked nothing like Charlie Brown.  I see no outrage and call to remove those CARTOONS from the stage.  Why can’t people understand that it’s CARTOON.  What about Fat Albert?  The Family Guy?  King of the Hill?  Like Wahoo, they’re all CARTOONS.

I think I fall on Jacob’s side of the argument on this one, I don’t think that the Cleveland fans are racist, casual or otherwise but that doesn’t make that caricature any more appealing.

I am a Washington Redskins fan so I am intimately familiar with this debate. I won’t stop supporting my team due to a mascot because, in my mind, it is ultimately “only a mascot”. However as soon as you ascribe emotinal feelings on the mascot (“a part of our childhood and our culture”), you have lost the argument. I have stated to fellow Redskin fans that it wouldn’t bother me in the least if they dropped the Redskins moniker and they have a visceral reaction to that idea while invoking “heritage”, “tradition” and “childhood memories”. If a fan has this kind of reaction, how would you expect a Native American to react to (what many consider) an affront to their entire racial heritage, not just their sporting heritage? If it’s “only a mascot”, that argument has to work both ways.

All this said, the question is moot as long as the teams are privately owned and public opinion is on their side. The teams will not change the logos.

Signed,

A fan of Cherokee descent who is not personally offended by these mascots…

I agree with Rob and (it seems) most of the other comments here that by demonizing the supporters, you end up with a “non-starter.”  That’s true in most situations, I expect.

The image is, of course, racist.  It’s also the symbol of a team.  It’s many things, and if we ignore that, we’ll never get it changed.

Jacob: I understand completely where you are coming from.  This is an issue of practicality/expediency.  Yes, if it were the Cleveland Negroes with a minstrel logo, we wouldn’t be having this debate.  Yes, you are correct that Native Americans have been marginalized to the point where there isn’t nearly the same sense of outrage.  But the quickest way to get rid of Chief Wahoo is not by telling the Wahoo supporters that they are racist and wrong.