Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/29/cleveland-indians-retire-racis.html
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Arkansas State University was “The Indians” while I was growing up, and “Injun Joe”, later “Running Joe”, was basically a straight-up trademark infringement copy of “Chief Wahoo”.
To my astonishment, a small, land grant college with a stereotypically awful sports-ball culture actually changed their mascot to the very classy “Red Wolves”, a decade ago now.
I’m sure they still blow horrifying amounts of the university’s money on losing sports programs, same as ever, but I give them a lot of credit for that.
The Minor League Spokane Indians have, since '05, been working with the local tribe and now sport a jersey with “Spokane” written out in Salish, which I think is pretty cool.
Are you sure that isn’t new Kazakh?
Seems like a trend. I thought for sure the Illini still had their logo, but I guess it’s also been dealt with, I guess way back in '07.
But I guess it wasn’t super bad to start with. Just kinda bad, and it surely didn’t draw the same ire that the Indians and Redskins did.
“the Chief was not representative of our tribe and culture, mainly because the costume is Sioux.”
Well it’s about fucking time.
I have family in Cleveland so, to my shame, it took a lot longer for the obvious racist-ness of the logo to dawn on me. This is the meme that finally got it through my skull:
I guess the patriotic Americans of Cleveland finally got tired of having their team represented by an illegal immigrant.
And then they replace it with this:
Actually they haven’t stopped selling clothing with it.
Bout damn time.
What about the Redskins? While the logo isn’t offensive i was under the impression that the term Redskin was, but perhaps i’m mistaken? A cursory search seems like Native tribes don’t find it particularly offensive i thought that the term was derogatory.
Classy indeed
Did a little bit more searching and here’s a rebuttal to the “Not offended by the term”
So they’re giving the logo the chop?
(I wonder if the Cleveland fans will stop with their stupid tomahawk-chop thing. I went to a game in Oakland with some Cleveland friends, and when the Indians got a hit and everyone around us did the chop I regretted not bringing my cloak of invisibility that day.)
where can i buy my Jew hat?
Yeah, this caricature should have been done away with in the 70s