A Native American professor at my college had once on his office door a collection of mock logos based off of the Cleveland Indians logo. It was all the same face, but different features were changed to make it offensive to a variety of races (African Americans - black face with a large, flat nose and large lips, Latinos - a sombrero was added, Asians - think Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, etc.). Basically, the point was why were these mock logos offensive, but not the Indians' logo?

I wish I could find it online, but my searching comes up empty.

Yeah there are a lot of people who find it offensive. Most of 'em don't realize that telling a Clevelander what to do is a sure way to get them to not do it. Especially since Cleveland sports get so much shit from other cities. I mean, the coverage of the Tribe/Yankees series was completely condescending. It's still a blue-collar immigrant town, with that kind of pride attached to it.

The Indians have an alternate non-offensive logo. [All of their logos over the years.]

Here's what you were looking for, fallenposters.

It is considered offensive by a lot of fans. Here's a recent article about it. Note the reaction of many people in the comments on that article.

A Caricature Is Not Insulting by Definition

Chief Wahoo is a cartoon Indian. He is just a generic cartoon representation of native Americans. Like all good cartoon characters he is smiling. Where is the racism? Where is it!?!?!?! ITS NOT THERE!!!!! You are all crazy.
-- tms

they aren't crazy, they're just liberal
-- Mikes Pace

Giants

I can't imagine how humilitated little people must feel when they hear the name Giants...baseball or football.

Padres? I'm an agnostic, and I'm pissed.

Athletics? Good luck getting that one past handicapped people.

Angels? Ask a baseball loving devil worshipper.

Packers? Are they gay, or what?

And there's not much Jazz in Utah, and not that many Lakes in Los Angeles, either.

I don't even want to think about the ramifications of Knickerbockers and Celtics.
--Anonymous

(there are much better comments at this link, which filters out the ridiculous stuff)

It's interesting that a lot of people are arguing that "I know some Native Americans, and they seem to be OK with it. They love the Indians. They wear the logo, so it must be OK." Does that mean it's "Not Racist"? Then what IS racist?

In the shower this morning I was pondering, what's worse: the Indians/Cheif Wahoo or the Washington Redskins?

Did you know that the Indians used to be the Cleveland Spiders? Isn't that a great name? When I was living in NE Ohio in the mid-90s, I used to daydream about them picking up the Spiders name again. It would've been a perfect time for the change, too--all the existing Cleveland fans would rush to buy new t-shirts and caps and jerseys and whatnot, and they could give the uniforms a sort of Oakland-Raiders-meet-Hot-Topic makeover--say, black, blood-red and dark gray--and design a stylish new logo, and, if they spun it right, people would love it. Ah, what might've been.

The 'Skins have a slur for a name; the Indians have a slur for a logo.

≡ Click to see image ≡

Remember Chief Zee? He was the unofficial Washington Redskins mascot who showed up at a Veterans Stadium game in 1983, where Philadelphia fans smashed his eye, broke his leg and stripped him to his underwear. "They treated me like chopped meat," he said later.

The next year, Eagles brass invited him back by way of apology; he was abused again. In his own words, "this senior-citizen lady comes up to me and says, ‘You've got a lot of nerve coming up here! We mugged the guy who dressed like that last year!' And then she threw her drink in my face. I can still smell that drink."

A lifelong 'Skins fan, I think the team name is totally inappropriate and offensive, especially for the team in our nation's capital. Given the choice between a slur for a team and degenerate fans (with whom many "regular fans" profess disgust and pride in equal measure), though, I'm not sure which I'd prefer.

Yeah, none of that's germane to the question, but I love Chief Zee despite his redskin outfit, and it's one of my duties as a DC fan to point out Philly's foibles at every chance. You know they threw snowballs at jolly old St. Nick? Bah, humbug, indeed.

As a "mixed blood" Native American who in the interest of full disclosure grew up in a very white middle class suburb, I knew of the mascot issue from the early 90s. I devoted a great deal of my undergrad education to American Indian history and then Native American law in law school.

I have spent a great deal of time with Indians (preferred by most) who count Chief Wahoo amongst the MOST OFFENSIVE mascots still in use.

I also attended Miami University during the name change debate (school is named after the Miami Nation in the Miami Valley region of Ohio - in case you were ever wondering why "Miami of Ohio") and it is amazing the stance the opposition takes to mascots.

it's one of my duties as a DC fan to point out Philly's foibles at every chance.

We are a tough, tough city. No question. But at least we're pretty! Oh wait. Never mind.

I find the Cleveland logo offensive, but the name Redskins is seriously beyond the pale (pun intended). Yet, any time I have ever had a conversation about the subject I've been labeled as the crazy PC police, humorless and oversensitive. I don't think I'm any of those things and I don't understand how defending a stupid sports team gets people so riled up that they would rather insult me than acknowledge the insult in the logo/name.

It's egregiously offensive, I agree, and good Lord, you don't have to be a member of a caricatured group to object to the idea of racial caricature. In addition, it's a dumb-looking and ugly logo. I agree that "the Spiders" is about the coolest baseball team name imaginable. I love looking back to the leagues of the early 20th century and their names - really cool, some of 'em.

There's a lot of study on the mascot/logo issues in the U.S. Recently, the Chief Illiniwek controversy created a lot of discussion about ethnic representation.

Things get further complicated when we think not only about how the dominant culture defines the appearances of those unlike them, but when minority cultures mimic other minority cultures, as in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition.

Personally, I don't believe in stubbornly defending something that is as reductive and stupid as the Indians' logo. You can - you can certainly muster arguments about tradition, local pride, freedom of speech, political correctness, and relative level of offensiveness. But why? Honestly, why would anyone feel it's worth the effort to defend, in the face of all the really negative impacts of stupid representations of Americans in such a high-profile way?

It's true that you can find some Natives who won't get up in arms about this. But those are single data points and using only a few data points to prove a point while ignoring the weight of opinion on the opposing side gives a false impression. The magazine Indian Country Today did some research on this topic and found that "81% of respondents felt use of Native American Indian names, symbols and mascots are "predominantly offensive and deeply disparaging." "

If there were sincere goodwill present, I think the logo would die a relatively quick natural death. At least one Native group has petitioned the team to remove the logo, and the city's been removing it from official city buildings and documents. There's little redeeming value to the tradition of this logo. The complaints are valid. And any organization that benefits from as much tax money as professional sports does should consider a bit of public responsibility in their choices.

Fortunately, they'll have plenty of time to think about this problem, since they've been relieved of the burden of having to play the World Series....(snicker snark snigger)

If anything, my response after watching that logo run around for seven nights was not so much about the Indian image as the fact that, in silhoutte, it looks exactly like a hand raising a middle finger. That can't be coincidental...

Once, hiking in NE Oregon, at a creek, I hung out with some kids (teens) from one of the local Umatilla bands. There were a bunch of salmon in the creek and some still looked OK to eat, but none of them had their tribal card, which would have allowed them to get one and carry it out, legally.

Anyway, I had been having conversations with a friend who is "into" this issue, so I asked them what they thought of all of this Indian, Redskin, Chief Knockahoma stuff, and they said, "that's just a bunch of liberal whitey stuff. Doesn't bother us much."

"that's just a bunch of liberal whitey stuff. Doesn't bother us much."

That's just it. When I look at "Chief Wahoo" or whatever, I think, "It's pretty inappropriate to caricature a race of people that we, the 'whitey', systematically displaced and massacred." Sure, some Native Americans may not find it offensive, but I still think it's irresponsible to minimize our own historic contributions to the rather grave future of the "Tribe".

danf, did you look at that survey?

...I mean, I wouldn't want my opinion about the cultural representation of groups I belong to to be represented by a handful of teenage boys.

Miko, I know. But it was just interesting that I got to ask a couple folks directly. I personally am appalled by the various representations of native americans in sport, especially since both college and professional sports are largely a product of the white dominant culture we have.

I did not intend to mean that since I had that conversation several years ago, I shrugged and changed my mind about it all. What it DID show me was that, perhaps, these kids had other things to get bent out of shape about.

As we watched the Cleveland-Boston series, my wife, who was humoring me by watching with me for most of it, slowly realized what was on the Indians' caps, and it took her awhile to really take in that they had this caricature on their unis.

I loved this and thought it was an apt response to it all.

it was just interesting that I got to ask a couple folks directly.\

Yeah. I think that in general, this phenomenon ends up confusing us about what members of various ethnic groups think. When we have so few points of contact with one another, a short interaction with a few members of a group can take on an importance out of all proportion. It's not that those few people are ever wrong - that is their viewpoint - it's that unless we spent more time regularly around many more members of other groups, read their publications, attended their events, participated in daily life close to them, our viewpoints would be rounded out.

these kids had other things to get bent out of shape about

They probably do. I agree that discussions over a logo of a Midwestern sports team might not be of immediate concern to groups of people who don't live near there, or even groups of people whose problems are in some ways more urgent. Native communities around North America face a lot of serious issues, like severe poverty, lack of access to education and care, low employment and lack of industry within reach of many communities brain drain from local communities as members leave for colleges and cities elsewhere, environmental issues, preservation of lands, preservation of traditional cultural knowledge, and so on. I can see why fussing about some dumb cartoon pales in comparison to what those concerns are.

To me that's all the more reason it should be trashed, though. The images aren't motivating anyone to solve the deeper problems - they are serving as a distraction that lets us fight about symbols rather than fighting to meet human needs and for cultural development. If we acknowledged that that image does not represent the best of intercultural relations, we'd have to become aware of the other ways intercultural relations might be suffering.

The Fightin' Whites thing is amusing, but there's no way it carries the punch to white people that "The Fighting Chinks" might have for Asians. That, and so often tongue-in-cheek representation of 'white' stuff as a pride point ('I'm proud to be a redneck') fits in too easily and comfortably with existing (and longstanding) ideas of white superiority and domination, which are really the problem, for my taste.

I've spent A LOT of time with leaders of various Indian Nations (while most people don't have a problem with Indian -- they do have an issue with "tribe").

This is just another glaring example of persecution that Indians have faced for centuries. That said, they have a heck of a lot of more important issues facing their communities to spend time battling billion dollar sport franchises. Things like alcoholism, drug abuse (with particularly dangerous factions moving drugs through tribal land from Mexico and Canada), issues of sovereignty, reclamation, extinction.

I might have more perspective on it had my grandmother not been a victim of forced assimilation, her family separated, brothers sent to boarding schools, converted by Christian missionaries. Her response - she enlisted and went to London during World War II as part of the WAAC. There she met my grandfather. There was a love affair for the history books.

My point. These arguments are never about political correctness or statistics. They are about people and recognizing the inherent "wrongness" in something despite "intent". Honoring a culture that might be lost in a hundred years v. continued decimation. So maybe you get labeled a bleeding heart. Good.

This is what I see in modern society about my heritage instead of having the opportunity to learn more about your culture from a woman so forced in assimilation you never knew she spoke fluent Muscogee until she was morphined out of her brains ravaged by cancer.

Also, the caricature of Chief Wahoo was actually lifted from a very anti-semetic caricature. Something I studied over a decade ago but I will ask my good friend who teaches American Indian Studies at MSU for the reference.

My ex husband was part native, and despised that logo. I'd also heard his dad rant about it on more than one occasion.
My father hated the Notre Dame logo. Which really is kind of a holdover from the days when everyone thought Irish=ignorant drunken brawler, and on that level does seem offensive. But most Irish-Americans embrace it. So go figure.

Here's the original CW logo, which is still sold on throwback jerseys and whatnot.

most Irish-Americans embrace it

Yeah, but Irish-Americans have been able to enter the mainstream and become part of the dominant culture. Though there were times they faced serious poverty and discrimination in this country, it turned out to be an evanescent phenomenon, perhaps because their apparent 'whiteness' blended easily with the dominant Anglo culture while immigrant groups that followed them (from Italy, Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and South Asia) found it harder to 'pass.'

As an Irish-American I have a feeling of dislike for the Notre Dame logo, though it doesn't carry much sting. I know that most people no longer have to separate the word 'Irish' from the words 'ignorant, irascible drunk' when they think about people from that background.

Great comment, Lola_G.

Whatever you think of the logo, it might interest you to know that the team name was chosen in honor of a legendary Penobscot pitcher on what was then the Cleveland Spiders, who died young, tragically.

When you see the fans in redface, I don't see how anyone can keep supporting such an offensive caricature. This one isn't even a great example, but you could see from the crowd shots during the ALCS that it was hardly an isolated case.

I read that Wiki article with great interest, jonmc, however it contradicts what you claim:

For many years, people believed that when the Cleveland Naps changed their name to the Indians in 1915 in baseball, the franchise did so to honor Sockalexis. However, Cleveland sports writers selected the new name, not members of the franchise. Sockalexis had died two years earlier but there was no mention of him in the announcements.