Washington’s slur is an easy call, but ‘Blackhawks’ has value
Dancing, despite being respectfully executed, helped force the University of Illinois’ much-beloved mascot, Chief Illiniwek, into retirement in 2007 after 80 years, although informal versions have appeared as the university makes up its mind on a new mascot. A student poll earlier this year was won by the belted kingfisher, a predatory bird that conveniently sports feathers of orange and blue, the school’s colors.
What changed? The times. These are the days of racial reckoning, touched off by the stunning death of George Floyd beneath a Minneapolis police officer’s knee. A world of historically lingering issues as varied as Confederate flags, Civil War memorials and the legacy of wars against Native Americans surfaced with a new urgency, along with corporate displeasure with brands that sound like racial slurs.
That’s where the Blackhawks and other American Indian-referencing teams come in. Compared with “Redskins,” the others clearly and fortunately are not wince-inducing racial slurs. I’m not a big hockey fan, but, as a loyal Chicagoan, I love our Blackhawks, and their mascot, unlike Chief Wahoo, dropped by the Cleveland Indians a couple of years ago, is not a goofy cartoon.
Chief Black Hawk was a real tribal leader after whom the 1832 Black Hawk War is named, a war in which such rising notables as Abraham Lincoln and future Confederacy president Jefferson Davis participated.
The Blackhawks’ first owner, Frederic McLaughlin, was commander of a World War I unit nicknamed the “Black Hawk Division,” from which he adapted his team’s name.
As NPR’s Steve Inskeep argued in an excellent essay in The Atlantic a few years ago, ”Indians are part of the American fabric, and it’s not automatically bad to include them in pop culture. The Chicago Blackhawks at least have a case to make, even if it’s one that needs to be weighed against other factors.”
But how do actual Native Americans feel about it? As mixed as polls show their views to be, they are owed the respect of having their viewpoint considered. In one indication of possibly changing views, after years of working with the Blackhawks management, Chicago’s American Indian Center has announced on its website that it will no longer have professional ties with the Blackhawks or any other organization that “perpetuates harmful stereotypes.”
“We see this as necessary,” the organization says, “to sustain a safe, welcoming environment for members of our community as well as protecting our cultural identity and traditions.”
The views of Native Americans are important, to say the least, after being ignored for much too long. Still I hope the team and Native American communities can resolve this divide without further marginalizing a history about which too many Americans know too little.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
