The nation’s largest Native American organization is disputing MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s reasoning on why the Atlanta Braves’ nickname and its “tomahawk chop” fan ritual should be allowed to continue.
Calling it a local issue, Manfred said Tuesday the Native American community in the region is “fully supportive of the Braves’ program, including the chop.”
“For me, that’s kind of the end of the story,’’ he added.
However, the National Congress of American Indians countered that statement on Wednesday saying, “Nothing can be further from the truth.”
Noting how MLB markets the game nationally and internationally, NCAI president Fawn Sharp said the Braves’ name, logo and the chop “are meant to depict and caricature not just one tribal community but all Native people, and that is certainly how baseball fans and Native people everywhere interpret them.”
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1. Walks Clog Up the Bases Posted: October 28, 2021 at 10:51 AM (#6049573)There is evidence to suggest that a large portion of people do not feel that way.
No, because we've incentivized being a bullish ####### and made being right a zero-sum game. To reconsider or back down is to somehow suggest you're weak.
Between Trump, Travis Tritt, and the Chop...
Has anyone ever left their team based on moral issues?
It can hardly come as news to you that the Braves are a right leaning operation. Most of MLB is. It is not the sport of the urban progressive.
I think he will be seen joining into the Lets Go Brandon chant.
Billy Sunday
Good to know Rob is an authorized spokesman for the NA community, and yeah, if it's a local issue let's go back to local history ca. Worcester v. Georgia and its aftermath
This assumes people outside of the right-wing ecosystem have a ####### clue what this even refers to.
And I know they can't really keep out Trump, though giving him a suite is ewww.
Maybe Jimmy Carter is well enough to make it up for a game, at least he'd be doing it as a Braves fan and not as a political stunt.
Does Carter get to any games anymore? I wouldn't blame him for not making it.
From what I can tell from the playoffs, the crowd always seems to start the chop on their own- the organist/sound people never get it going or join in. I could be wrong but it sounded like a few times the crowd started the chop and the organist quickly started playing Seven Nation Army to try to change it to that.
Urban progressives favor the Beautiful Game whose fans routinely shout racist slurs at non-White players.
"Roughly half of (the NLCS chops) were instigated by fans; the rest were team-initiated, complete with music piped over the PA system and graphics splashed across the jumbotron."
In 2020, the Braves said that 'discussions were still ongoing' about the chop, whatever the heck that means.
I don't think Carter is able to attend Braves games any more, though I'm still hopeful.
Yes...the big electronic tomahawk is still chopping. And they're still turning down the lights to encourage the phone-light chop.
it's my all-time favorite piece of baseball writing, and I am not alone.
Wood was born in 1889, and Angell was born in 1920.
Wood and Deacon McGuire - who was born in the midst of the Civil War in 1863 - each appeared in a game for the 1912 Boston Red Sox.
Angell still walks among us, at 101 years young.
Finally, something even more idiotic and less relevant to the proceedings at hand than the frequent salutes to the career of Ric Flair.
When I moved to the Trumptastic exurbs of North Dallas, the local high school mascot -- as emblazoned on the water tower in the center of town -- was the Fighting Coon. Supposedly, back in the 1920's or so when the first high school was built, a local yokel brought his feisty pet raccoon to a school board meeting to impress upon board members the qualities they should desire in their local scholar-athletes, and thus the Fighting Coons were born. Fast forward about 75 years to c.2000 and the school board suggests changing the name to the Fighting Raccoons to get with the times. The consternation from alumni, yokels, and hangers-on was more than even the subsequent redistricting maps every year as the school district has gone from one to a dozen high schools. Bumper stickers and t-shirts with "Don't Rac My Coons!" were printed and apparently actually purchased and the furor continued for a couple of years but it's been a while since I've heard any of that noise. Also the water tower was decommissioned and torn down about 10 or so years ago because it wasn't in service any more.
Not in the US. Racist fans are an issue in Europe, and it's worse the farther east and south you go, but soccer in Europe has an entirely different fanbase than in the US. Much more working class overall, and (especially when it comes to the national teams) with a much bigger ultra-right component.
Sweet Jesus, I'd actually pay money to watch this! To the barricades...!
Now, now, sometimes the chants aren't racist, they're homophobic...
All of this seems very angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff that ultimately revolves around something like "the ethics of cultural victory," or even possibly more so, "good manners." There's no real handbook for that, so it's subject to all manner of changing fads and changing whims with no real intellectual heft or principle behind it. What does anyone point to as an objective lodestar to figure out whether a bunch of white people celebrating the accomplishments of their baseball team at an entertainment venue by moving their arms up and down while verbalizing a sound in unison is "bad"? It's not really even aimed at Native Americans in any serious way, but would it be more and more ok if more and more of the battles BITD were stalemates or akin to Custer getting his ass kicked? That seems like an odd criterion.
(*) Which is to say, it's kind of silly and weird and not really my cup of tea ... but so are a lot of things that really aren't *that* big a deal.
(**) And the natural converse of the fact that getting rid of it won't do anything substantive is that keeping it won't do anything substantive.
Woke types tend to be humorless drones devoid of any sense of irony, but yes, it is quite funny indeed that the sport they've gravitated to in the hopes that they wouldn't have to stench themselves with liking something ... gasp! ... American, is in point of fact, almost without exception in Europe, the sport of the hardened and retrograde prole. The biggest of the big clubs have somewhat gentrified themselves -- still only somewhat -- but I'd invite any of them to go to a match at, say, Palace or QPR or Millwall and report back.
Not in the US. Racist fans are an issue in Europe, and it's worse the farther east and south you go, but soccer in Europe has an entirely different fanbase than in the US.
Yeah, I'm well aware of that, but it's still slightly ironic that with the exception of the month of October, the Wokest newspaper in the entire United States devotes more coverage to European soccer than to baseball-----lots more. During the regular baseball season, the Manchester soccer team gets more regular news features than either the Yankees or the Mets.
See 32, which fits the Times' pivot to soccer like a non-OJ glove.
It's not a magic bullet that will solve the biggest problems particular to the lives of indigenous Americans, but it's the sort of thing that makes working on those problems easier because the caricatured version of another person's culture isn't occupying disproportionate space in one's head. It's hard to quantify how much of an effect this has, but it sure seems useful, even if we don't want to just settle for "useful".
Human behavior is never going to be "objective", but "treat others as you would like to be treated" seems to be a pretty broadly-accepted guideline, and note that "like" does not mean "begrudgingly accept" for those who say "I wouldn't mind".
as noted too often before, it was 100 years ago that the mascot made some sense.
now? not so much, when this "plucky underdog school" is the only one with its only football TV contract, has gotten into countless lucrative bowl games it doesn't deserve for decades, and barely deigns to consent to playing major-sport conference schedules.
all that's about as "Irish" as a bar mitzvah.
enough already.
This is a sensible code of personal ethics, maybe even an honorable one -- but it doesn't really apply here because we're not talking about individuals, we're talking about groups and cultures and more importantly, no one is really "treating" anyone in any way.
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