The newly launched @DeChiefWahoo Twitter account is featuring photos of Indians fans showing off their Tribe merch sans Wahoo. Here’s the first tweet, published yesterday:
#DeChief your Indians gear, send pics for us to retweet, and join the movement.
— #DeChief (@DeChiefWahoo) March 19, 2014
The concept, completely unsurprisingly, has garnered all sorts of hate messages. User @I_AM_RONIMAL tweets: “Actually one more. If I go to a game and see defaced gear I will. I repeat. I WILL smack you in front of everyone. Cock suckers these days”
Charming stuff.
Still, the account has accrued plenty of fans, as well, who are now busting out the needles and removing the team’s red Sambo caricatures from their gear.
This year, the Chief Wahoo debate has become louder than in years past. The Plain Dealer patted itself on the back for publishing an anti-Wahoo editorial finally. Scene‘s own 2012 feature on the racist cartoon has been linked with vigor since its publishing. On the other side of the #DeChief coin, GV Artwork and Design unveiled a “Keep the Chief” T-shirt that many are clamoring to purchase and wear this year.
The odd thing about all of the discussion is how thoroughly people misunderstand the decades-long backlash against using a caricature of a human race as a sports logo. The refrains of the pro-Wahoo crowd have become a steady din in the background of this city, always missing the mark and excusing the team for employing blatant dehumanization in its fucking marketing repertoire.
The Louis Sockalexis “honor” story has been debunked long ago. There’s nothing prideful about Chief Wahoo, nor the name “Indians” in representing a baseball team. Of course, the team’s top brass has sidestepped any real questioning about the logo, preferring instead to cherish either nostalgia or, worse, ethnocentricity.
Somewhere in the organization, though, they’re aware of how demeaning the logo actually is: “When we’ve been in Arizona, we’ve really focused on the block C – being in that region, in that area, we’re certainly cognizant of that.” That’s senior director of communications Chris Danberg dancing around the subject. The team is, of course, in Arizona right now.
Anyway, the #DeChiefWahoo campaign is under way and attracting all sorts of praise and aggression. Tweet your pics of de-Chief’d apparel. As Teddy Roosevelt once said, haters gonna hate.
- DENNIS BROWN, TWITTER
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2014.
I for one am so sick of this PC crap.. where is the harm in any of this?It’s not like naming a team the Indians and have a caricature of an Indian is demeaning.
There are a lot of other much more important things to be upset about in this country. Like the homeless and hungry
How many years has the team had it’s name
GET OVER IT
Yes, there are more important things “like the homeless and hungry.” So I guess we shouldn’t waste time watching baseball in the first place, since only the MOST important things are relevant.
I live in the akron area, and you will find arrow statues and Indian statues all over the area. Ohio is rich with Indian culture. The Cleveland Indians logo is an aknowledgement and tribute to the rich history of our area. Not a demeaning logo or racism. People grow up.
Hey shithead, comparing historical native american words/names (ie: Cuyahoga, Erie) to Chief Wahoo would only make sense if the County seal of each was of a drunk, smiling cartoon Indian hold the severed head of a white lady by the bonnet. Fuck yourself. It’s embarrassing that its something people outside the city associate with Cleveland. It’s 2014. Christ. They’ve never won shit with it anyways. Let’s change up the Karma.
Wahoo is NOT Politically incorrect! That is a complete lie. Get on with using your brains.
Im Native American, and i grew up in cleveland. This does not offend me, or my family at all. I personally like the fact we have a team called the Indians. if something does not directly effect you, why are you trying to speak for an entire race of people, in which most of you i bet are not involved. But on a side note, can we change the name of the browns? what the fuck is a cleveland brown?
Ownership can end this growing polarization amongst baseball fans……the longer this drags on, though, may corner the Dolan’s into developing a new nickname to go with a new team logo.
Rynediperna needs to get laid. Every race and species on the planet has done horrible things, but theyve done great things as well. Your veiws are misguided and short sited. Do you share the same hatred for early americans that poisoned and slayed native americans or imprisoned thousands of Japanese Americans during WW2? You Rynediperna are a mental infant.
You’re a cunt and a fucking dolt shawn anthony castro. Tell your caregiver to buy a bottle of bleach for you, so you can drink it and marginally improve the collective IQ for future generations.
Great…thousands of comments on the PD site and it finally died down…now this site has to keep stirring up the pot and trotting out the Wahoo BS…slow news day, kids?
The whole thing is fucking ridiculous. Keep the name and redesign Wahoo along the lines of the best logo in pro sports…the CHICAGO BLACK HAWKS…and tell anyone who doesn’t like it to go take a flying one at a rolling one and piss up a rope.
Go ahead and mess up your gear…look like a raggedy-assed street person who bought your TRIBE gear at Goodwill or Salvation Army. As if anybody is going to give a shit…
As for me, I will continue to wear the biggest Wahoo made…on the all-red T-shirts from the mid-Nineties, and I will also wear my CHICAGO JEWS shirt (the one the protesters refused to sell me, so I had it made) and get a few more laughs.
Last guy who sat next to me was Jewish and wanted to buy it. Nobody thought I was protesting anything…they thought it was funny. And unless somebody in authority tells me to turn it inside out or be kicked out, it’s staying on. So is Wahoo.
De-Chief this.
Chuckles the Clown
I’m Irish-American. I guess I should be offended at Norte Dame for using a leprechaun characature in their logo too? America is becoming such a sickeningly PC society.
You should only be offended if the Irish were wiped off the face of the Earth by the United States government, and the remaining handful were coerced to far away lands, were poverty, addiction, and suicide run rampant to this day. Of all the stands you could take, to support a racist logo as a representation of our city is ludicrous. You’re a fucking cunt.
The more the wind tries to pull my coat off, the tighter I wrap it around myself.
I am what I am. But you’re just an obnoxious asshole.
You will have to cut my Wahoo gear from my cold, dead body.
Chuckles the Clown
Re-brand!
Use classic/celebrated regional tie ins: Pee Dee Plums; LeBrons (no caricature -use #23); Modells (no caricature – use inverted Super Bowl trophy); Sheepsheads; Potholes; Zebra Mussels…so many…
Funny how the liberal, PC folks on this thread are the ones spitting out the most venom. For wanting to see a change in the name of not offending anyone, they sure don’t mind hurling the most nasty epithets at the folks who disagree with them. Irony rules.
Actually Rick Bub- Most of the comments I see here, are in support of NOT changing the name/logo. Most of which are pretty aggressively charged. I guess it doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of degenerate clevelander’s can’t understand the sensitivity of the subject.. FYI- You don’t have to be overly PC to try to relate or understand why the Native American community feels this way about our logo. You guy’s realize that everyone outside of the baseball-fan-community is laughing at how completely blind and racist you all appear to be, right..?? I couldn’t care any less about our pitiful baseball team or the “history” behind their logo, and I don’t know why any of that is more important to any of you, than the history of an ENTIRE NATION OF PEOPLE.
It’s not hard for me to take a look outside my box, and see why the people who originally inhabited this country, and were violently forced out of their homes and murdered by all of OUR european ancestors would be just a liiitttttttlllee bit upset that we now embrace a logo that depicts a (completely absurd looking) Native American to represent our fucking baseball team…
Imagine someone coming to your home and killing your mother, kicking the rest of you out of the house and living in it themselves. Then, feeling completely helpless and defeated, you see that person wearing a shirt that said “I <3 [insert your last name]", right over the worst picture ever taken of you.. Now multiply that by 10,000,000 and you might START to understand how they feel.
I know that most of you retards won’t even consider my argument to be valid, and will continue to talk about how people need to “just get over it” and quit being so “sickeningly PC”, but I thought I’de let ya know that the educated, evolved, and conscious world thinks your outdated views are flat-out laughable.
Frankly, my dear Skree, the rest of the world doesn’t give a damn…either about Cleveland…or Wahoo.
Chuckles the Clown
Indians are from India. Maybe we should ask an Indian what they think, Lol!
I understand the point of the anti-Wahoo crowd, but to be honest, I was raised on Chief Wahoo and love the logo as a result. I won’t bitch if the Tribe does away with him, but the PC crowd is beyond obnoxious and self-righteous about it. So obnoxious. I’m probably far to the left of most of anti-Wahoo crowd; the problem is that liberals do tend to focus on these issues that are of little actual real world consequence, and serve to do nothing but alienate middle-of-the-road types that make up so much of the Midwest. For the pro-WAhoo crowd, start being honest about the fact that you could see how he could be viewed as offensive to Native Americans, and admit that you love him because you were raised on him, even though it may serve to denigrate those who were here first and that our ancestors slaughtered for our own gain.
Why does one opinion need to rule over the other opinion? Can’t we respect each other. If you don’t like The Chief then don’t spend your money on it. If you do like The Chief then buy all that Wahoo gear. If you don’t tell me what to do/think, then I will do the same for you. If your on a diet and don’t eat hot dogs then should no one else in the stadium be able to eat a hot dog?
Chief Wahoo does not offend me, anymore than Aunt Jemina or Uncle Ben or Betty Crocker or Mister Magoo offend me.
The Chief is a lovable cartoon mascot, not a Confederate-flag draped black jockey hitching post lawn ornament. Most (self-described) Native American comments I have read on the PD’s website seem to say “keep the mascot and get over yourselves”. MOST of them — there does seem to be one greedy mofo who claims to be a Native American and who demands the mascot be removed and “reparations” be paid. (For what? To whom? In what amount? On what theory?)
There are ways to calm this debate down, but I suspect it is thoroughly enjoyed by most who participate, especially by those out-of-touch white liberals who have mistaken patronizing political correctness for mutual respect.
Carry on, folks. It’s time for the daffodils to bloom and the annual Chief Wahoo Bullshit Jam-Bo-Ree.
This is one issue that Scene likes to push 100% full throttle. I understand the anti-Wahoo camp’s arguments and can see why it’s a caricature and offensive. Yet I still don’t hear all sorts of Native Americans speaking out against the Chief. I mean, these are the guys that are supposed to be offended, and we get how many protesting or complaining? Most comments I hear from Native Americans (or people claiming to be such) are pro-Wahoo and do not find him offensive. So then why is everyone else getting so offended if the group it’s supposed to be offensive to likes it and wants it to stay?