The Cleveland Indians have a mascot that’s offensive to many Native Americans and other First Nations people in Canada. The team has slowly, quietly, tried to phase that logo out of its everyday use, opting for a block “C” as its primary logo and using a stylized “I” as its pretzel shape at concession stands.
But still, the use of Chief Wahoo remains common in Cleveland, especially among a portion of its fans who feel a fondness for the genocide of North America’s first human inhabitants.
And the team has embraced that logo in some ways. Though the team wore its block C logo on its batting helmets this season superstitious baseball players had decided to wear Chief Wahoo hats the past two playoffs, and it remained a shoulder patch on the team’s jerseys.
With another playoff collapse complete, though, there are some who feel the bad juju of Chief Wahoo is the reason Cleveland can’t seem to finish off an elimination game anymore. And one fan is determined to erase a “racist” logo not just from his baseball team, but from his very body.
One tribe fan has started a Kickstarter to raise money to get his “obscene” leg tattoo removed from his body. David Allen says he got the tattoo in the 1990s and now needs $1,000 to get that “travesty” off his body.
With the Indians losing a 6th straight close-out playoff game (Cubs and Yankees), the time has come for me to get my racist and obscene Chief Wahoo logo tattoo removed from my leg. I had this tattoo done when I turned 18 back at the height of Indians euphoria in the 90s. Yes, people in Cleveland were literally tattooing their bodies because it was so amazing the Indians were a good team after 50 years of losing! As a dumb 18 year old, I had no idea the logo represented a white man’s twisted view of a Native American. Little did I know this would turn out to be worse than a tramp stamp. I have lived in shame both from the worry of offending someone and from embarrassing Indians play over the years. I’ve had enough. Help me right this wrong by donating a few bucks that will put towards removing this travesty from my body once and for all.
It seems to be a move more out of superstition than actually resenting the logo, though he does call it “racist” and say he’s embarrassed to show it to people. So far he’s about a quarter of the way there, but there’s time for his tattoo removal fund just yet.
Plenty of folks are commenting on the page with Chief Wahoo as their avatar and calling him a moron because the secondary logo of your baseball team is an essential part of how they view themselves as people. And that’s certainly one way to go through life. If screaming at minorities about how their opinions aren’t as relevant as yours is something you enjoy, Chief Wahoo is certainly for you.
But eventually that logo — and maybe someday the nickname — will slip away. And it will all happen a lot faster if Cleveland’s baseball team keeps blowing leads in the playoffs with Wahoo on the cap and fans in redface in the stands.
(via Cleveland Scene)
