The Cleveland Indians baseball team’s name change was a year in the making. One could argue the same may be true now for baseball’s Atlanta Braves and football’s Kansas City Chiefs.
The Indians of Major League Baseball announced it would discuss a name change in July 2020, on the heels of the Washington Redskins being pressured by sponsors into dropping the name of their National Football League team. In December, Cleveland announced it would drop the “Indians” moniker. Last week, the new name was announced, becoming the “Guardians” in 2022.
For activists, that’s two names down, two (or more) to go. The contention the Redskins name was uniquely offensive never held up, given that Native Americans never really found the name all that offensive. But the Washington Post, progressive activists, and corporations who confuse progressive activists for the general public all pushed ahead. And they were never going to stop with the Redskins.
With Cleveland joining the Washington Football Team, the Braves and the Chiefs are the new targets. In USA Today, Peter Funt listed them and the Chicago Blackhawks as teams whose names “might reasonably offend Native Americans” and will be changed. Steve Hummer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution agreed with that sentiment, saying a name change for the Braves was inevitable. After all, the Braves “trivialized” Native American history by adopting the Braves moniker.
The Chiefs have tried to appease the activists rather than surrender entirely to their demands. The organization has already prohibited headdresses and face paint and modified its version of the “Tomahawk Chop.” Now, the organization has jettisoned its mascot, Warpaint.
If you need any indication the Chiefs will inevitably change their name, this would be it. Warpaint is not a caricature of a Native American or even a person at all. Warpaint is a horse.
Keeping these names would not offend anyone but a select few activists who will complain about anything. But it appears that corporate wokeness has won in the sports world, and it’s only a matter of time before the Chiefs, Braves, and Blackhawks are no longer the Chiefs, Braves, and Blackhawks.
How erasing Native Americans from our shared sports culture is supposed to honor them is anyone’s guess. The fact remains that most people, including most Native Americans, don’t see it that way. But sports teams and their corporate sponsors adhere to the loud minority of activists pushing that narrative, which means you should prepare for more name changes in the future.
