I love the Cleveland Indians.

My dad took my brother and I to watch the tribe at Municipal Stadium, where it didn’t matter if the seat on your ticket was behind a beam, you could sit almost anywhere. I was only a kid when Jacob’s Field opened in 1994, but we went to games that year and every year during the height of the Tribes 90s dominance. Entire seasons sold out, but my dad waited in line for hours so we’d get to see the Yankees, the Tigers, and his old home team, the Royals face off against the Tribe. And when I played baseball in the backyard or with friends in the nearby park, I always imagined myself in an Indians uniform.

I was still a kid when I remember seeing my first protest outside of the ballpark. A group of guys had signs, though I can’t remember what they said. But I remember asking my father what was going on.

“They're protesting Chief Wahoo,” he told me.

“Why?” I thought.

I loved Chief Wahoo. He was fun, with a big, silly grin that appealed to me. In a crouched batter’s stance, tall feather sticking out from his headband, he seemed ready to send a fastball careening over the fences, the kind of halcyon cliché that sports movies and childhood memories are made of.

“They don’t like him,” Dad said, “They think he’s making fun of Indians.”

The thought had never occurred to me. Chief Wahoo was so happy. How could anybody think he was anything but fun?

“Is he?” I asked.

My dad shook his head reassuringly, “He’s honoring them. The Indians had one of the first Native American baseball players, and the team was named after him.”

I nodded, never questioning his answer. He was my dad, and at that age he seemed to know almost everything. From then on, whenever I saw protesters outside the stadium, I saw them the way my dad saw them: well-meaning but missing the point.

It wasn’t until the Indians made it to the World Series that I started to understand. I was a little bit older in 1995, and when it was time to go school shopping, there were shirts with a decidedly old-school version of the Chief Wahoo logo. This version, if you’re not familiar, is notably more a caricature: the nose is more pointed and crooked, the skin closer no longer crimson red, the feather loopy and curved behind his head.

As soon as I saw that image, I knew it was wrong. It instantly reminded me of red-lipped, tar-colored cartoons that were all-too-frequently used to mock African-Americans before it became impolite to show them in popular culture. This is where Wahoo came from, I realized. Suddenly, I understood that the protesters knew more than I did.

It took me several more years to really, fully admit that the popular version of Chief Wahoo was racist. It’s not easy to unlearn the more charming story you learned from your dad, or to separate the good times you had as a child from the symbols that surrounded you.

Because in truth, Chief Wahoo made me happy as a kid. I liked him. To recognize the symbol as one rooted in racism and persecution was to call into question all the positive feelings I associated with him. With MY baseball team. With MY dad.

I never thought of myself as racist. “Racist” was a word used about other people, bad people. I wasn’t bad. I had friends who were black, who were Indian (as in from India, not First Nations). If Chief Wahoo made me feel happy, and if I’m not racist, then how can Chief Wahoo be racist?

And anyway, isn’t he there to honor the first Native American players?

That’s all bullshit; defensive thoughts that are clearly illogical. Racism isn’t always about segregated lunch counters or using slurs; sometimes, it’s about images that are baked so much into culture that they blind you to how hurtful those things are to someone else. The most hurtful stereotypes aren’t the ones we all know are false, they’re the ones we don’t realize we’ve used a thousand times.

Chief Wahoo is racist. If you’re not trying to hurt other people, using him as a logo is wrong, because the use of that logo does hurt people. These are facts.

I know a lot of people who try to compare Wahoo to the Fightin’ Irish or the Boston Celtics logo, but those aren’t the same. In those cases, Irish players got together and used an image that portrays them as strong, as confidant, as they want to be seen. Wahoo is how white people looked at Aboriginal Americans: goofy, unsophisticated, his facial features absurdly out-of-proportion. This is in stark contrast to the Fighting Irishman, who was made by his own people as a representation of how they wanted the world to see them.

Just because Wahoo is wrong doesn’t mean your love of the Indians is wrong. It doesn’t make YOU a bad person. It’s time for us to be the grown-ups who admit that while it might bring us pleasure, our actions have consequences for other people.

You can still love your memories of the Indians AND find place in your heart for a logo that isn’t Chief Wahoo. I know that accepting your own feelings for the logo and how it makes others feel is uncomfortable, but it’s important. Imagine how you would feel if someone came up to one of your loved ones and started yelling slurs in their face; it’d make you feel angry and offended. That’s what we’re doing by continuing to parade Wahoo everywhere around our baseball team. It doesn’t FEEL that way because when you look at Wahoo, all you see is a fun-loving mascot. The people you’re hurting aren’t right in front of you. That doesn’t mean that they’re not seeing all the images of Wahoo on TV, of the fans in red-face, people flapping their hand in mock war cries as the Indians rally their way to victory. But at those moments, you’re the one yelling slurs, you’re the one in a modern version of blackface, you’re the one carrying around a racist image for all the world to see.

But we don’t have to be that way. We can decide to make the change.

There are a lot of people who will read this and think I’m just another mealy-mouthed softy, like I’m trying to ruin your fun. But I’m not. I’m trying to save the heritage that I love and that I think most of the people reading this love, too.

Because here’s the thing: the times, they are a-changin’. Sooner or later, the Redskins will be forced to change their name, and then we’ll become the most offensive entity in professional sports. If we don’t adopt some modest changes now, more severe ones will be forced on us in the future. It's not just the right thing to do; this change is inevitable, and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves.

Let’s change away from Wahoo now, while we’re in control. Let’s be the bigger, stronger party. Someday in the not-so-distant future, people will look back on Wahoo the same way I looked back on portrayals of blackface. They’ll be shocked that it could be used so casually, that it wasn’t considered universally offensive. Unless we want to be the villains in that story, we’ve got to admit that this logo is hurtful to millions of people.

Because, at the end of the day, Chief Wahoo isn’t what you really love about the Indians. What you love is the thrill of an exciting baseball game. What you love is the tension of a close game. What you love is the memories of seeing games with you Dad (or your Mom) and all the good times you had at the ballpark, whether it was League Park, Municipal Stadium, or Jacob’s Field.

Keeping Chief Wahoo isn’t helping you enjoy baseball, he’s a huge distraction from the game we all love. If we want keep our childlike joy, we’ve got to be willing to behave like adults.

#Indians #Cleveland #History #Sports #Culture