King Kaufman's Sports Daily
The Cleveland Indians minstrel show: Fans painted to resemble the outrageously racist mascot are shown without comment in the mainstream media. Enough.
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Oct. 18, 2007 | For a short while Wednesday morning, the lead photo on the front page of ESPN.com depicted some Cleveland Indians fans at Tuesday night's ALCS Game 4 with their faces made up to resemble the Indians absurdly racist caricature mascot, Chief Wahoo.
The photo was replaced early in the day by one of Kobe Bryant as his possible trade from the Los Angeles Lakers became the top story. On ESPN.com's baseball cover the lead photo was of Cleveland relief pitcher Rafael Betancourt.
The photo of the fans became a topic of discussion in this column's letters thread as well as other places around the Web, including at Deadspin, where Will Leitch wrote, "We don't want to sound like the PC police here, but seriously now: Is it really OK for Indians fans to be dressing up in red face?"
I don't mind being called p.c. so I'll answer: No. It's not OK.
I suppose reasonable people can disagree about whether the team name Indians is offensive, but there's just no arguing about Chief Wahoo. It's a Little Black Sambo-style caricature that should have been retired decades ago. If those fans in Cleveland had been in minstrel-show blackface, ESPN never would have run a photo of them without comment, as simply a depiction of happy fans in the stands. The picture only would have run as the centerpiece of a story about fan racism.
And there is nothing about grinning-Indian redface that's even a little bit less racist than minstrel-show blackface.
In an e-mailed statement, ESPN spokesman Paul Melvin said, "The photo came down due to normal, daily editorial cycle. However, we have also discussed the photo choice internally and determined that we must, and will, be more selective as the series progresses."
The Indians realize at least some of this. Chief Wahoo is not as ubiquitous as he once was. The official, in-stadium mascot is now a generic Youppi-esque critter called Slider.
A search for "Chief Wahoo" on the Indians Web site reveals one mention in 2007, a reference to a fan's tattoo. Yeah, he's a thing of the past. Except he's on the uniform, and his image is all over the site, though you might not notice at first glance.
