The Mistake on the Lake

I'm a Clevelander. Born and raised on the east side, it took me a while to understand and love the city I'm from. Cleveland has taught me about resilliance: to factories shutting down, lake effect blizzards and most of all, sports team dissappointment.

It's a part of life. Sundays, my family would go to church and come home, eat lunch and watch the Browns get beat. But every once in a while, we get lucky. And Cleveland comes alive. That's what LeBron James has done. But now that LeBron is gearing up to leave beloved Cleveland, the Indians are front and center.

The Cleveleand Indians (aka the Tribe) are not normally very good. About one season per decade, they might 'accomplish' something. But, the Indians are a staple represented by none other than good old Cheif Wahoo.

Now, in class we touched on the stereotypes that play into team mascots. But there was one major point that we didn't make in regards to the Indians. On top of the symbolic representation of Cheif Wahoo, the Indians are on the same level as the Marlins, the Orioles, the Cubs, the Cardinals, and even 'Sox'. It's not bad enough that we've continued to allow such a stereotype to exist, but we've degraded it to comparisons with fish and birds. Yikes.

This type of representation creates a breeding ground for the 'third person effect'. I guess I just don't understand why 'we' don't try to change the names of stereotypical mascots. One would think that 'we' would like to forget the woes of our culturally dominant history over marginalized groups such as the Native Americans.

It's time to let it go and start fresh. I mean, what would it say about our country if the 'Indians' were to win the world series? The rest of the world would laugh at our hypocricy and racism.

One day perhaps we'll have had enough of subconcious misrepresentation. But most Clevelanders would just say that the name's unlucky and it's time for a change...