Well first off, Patrick Kane did black face was told it was racist and he should apologize. He didn’t
Crawford got his mask painted like a chiefs’ headdress. Was told it was racist and cultural appropriation and he basically laughed and said fuck off.
Racist fans chanting at Devante Smith-Pelly.
To name a few off the top of my head that’s not the logo. And I think it was rich to have the PR statement say “racist comments and other inappropriate behavior will not be tolerated” but they only mean when their fans get caught and it’s blatant. They don’t mean their players or their logo or anything else 🤷🏽♀️
These are all important (and awful) incidents to address. I wanted to also question the anon’s implicit belief that the logo is a pocket issue, isolated from other forms of racism might be active in the franchise/fanbase.
The logo didn’t plant anti-blackness in Kane’s head; there are players and fans of other teams who would come out and do the same if they weren’t afraid of the consequences. But the thing is that Blackhawks players and fans know that there won’t be any consequences for violent, racially-charged acts, because they see every day that there are no consequences.
The logo isn’t “the” problem, it’s a symbol of a culture that’s willing to commit acts of racial hatred. But it being a symbol, the clear and open statement that this community welcomes hatred, also feeds that culture.
Is an executive ever going to call Corey Crawford and say, “Hey, knock it off with the headdress stuff or we won’t start you next game”? Is the NHL going to condemn a fan for waving a bloody model head scrawled with threats impaled on a spear, described here by Dr. Adrienne Keene? No, and not just because they’ve shown that they’re not interested in that ethical conversation but because if they did, it would pretty obviously open the door to questioning the franchise as a whole. The Blackhawks are worth over US $1 billion, and that value is inextricably tied to their history, fan identity, the name, that image (or at least they think it is). They’re not about to let that door creak open.
Blackhawks players and fans are perfectly capable of picking up what the franchise puts down. Anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity do have their own histories and ways they interact with each other, and there’s a whole conversation about Blackness in hockey and the anti-Black incidents in Chicago/the response in particular that needs to be had–but it is not surprising that hatreds flock together. We should not act like we’re surprised when they do.
If we demonstrate over and over again that a form of racial violence is acceptable (not just acceptable: admirable, inspirational!), if players are constantly encouraged and contractually obligated to perform and celebrate that violence, then…gosh, we wind up with players and fans who think other forms of racially-charged violence are okay too.
Why I’m talking about the image as violent, beyond the general idea it’s “Bad”:
I know the anon acknowledged the logo, but many conversations about the logo break down to “It’s a picture of a Native man so it’s probably Bad” vs “It’s just a picture of a Native man, how can that be inherently Bad?”
Indigenous people don’t have some kind of allergy to pictures of their own faces. The effects sports mascots have on Indigenous people are things like trying to walk down the street and seeing that time your grandfather’s head was cut off and stolen immortalized on strangers’ sweatshirts.
The logo is a version of the “Indian head” used on coins and in other forms of heraldry which directly descends from the US, British, and Canadian governments’ practice of paying cash money for severed human heads or other proof of the killing of Indigenous people. Pieces of people’s bodies would be brought in to city hall or the post office and exchanged for a reward of around £40 for a man, and £20 for women or children under 12 years old. In California the reward was just $5. Many parts of the US and Canada never rescinded these rewards: they are still, technically, on the books.
If the image of a nameless person’s severed head, representative of millions of people who were stripped out of history and who you now know nothing about, doesn’t hit you, maybe it will help to know that he is not nameless.
That is a man’s head.
The name “Blackhawk” does not refer to any tribe or nation. Mahkate:wi-meši-ke:hke:hkwa, called Black Hawk by English-speakers, was a Sauk war chief (a military leader, not a civil leader) and a best-selling author.
He had a big life. You can read about it in his own words or the words of Native scholars of many nations who have since celebrated and examined his legacy.
But one thing hockey fans need to know about him is that, when he died, his family buried him on the banks of the Mississippi river he had loved and defended all his life, and a white man named James Turner dug up his bones and laminated them for display. His sons Nashashuk and Gamesett were forced to go to the governor and plead for the return of their father’s head. It was granted, but they realized that if they brought their father home someone would only steal the bones again. Their only way to protect him was to entrust his bones to the local Historical Society and return home without them.
I know many hockey fans here are young; many of you haven’t lost parents yet. I have returned my father’s bones to the mountain where he wanted them, and this is where I break every time I see that bloody head.
I hope we can also open up to the voices living Indigenous people who are talking about this, the Native athletes, the children, the American Psychological Association’s call for “the immediate retirement of all American Indian mascots…based on a growing body of social science literature that shows the harmful effects of racial stereotyping and inaccurate racial portrayals, including the particularly harmful effects of American Indian sports mascots on the social identity development and self-esteem of American Indian young people.”
If Chicago gets rid of the logo tomorrow, this history will still exist. The community that chose to keep using the logo for decades will still be a community who chose to use violent racial imagery, who didn’t see a problem or take action. We as hockey fans will still be a community who shrugged and didn’t listen to or ask questions of Indigenous people even while we played a game descended from Indigenous games, used equipment made by Indigenous workers, enjoyed watching Indigenous players. We’ll also still have some shit to confront around anti-Blackness.
But saying out loud, “This is what we did,” is the first part of looking at each other, fans and players, and saying, “And we’re not going to do it anymore.”
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Beacon Press. pp. 64–65. ISBN 978-0-8070-0040-3. Retrieved 18 April 2015.
Liz Sonneborn (2014-05-14). “Chronology of American Indian History”. Books.google.ca. p. 88. Retrieved 2016-07-28.
So besides the logo and name needing to be changed, what makes the blackhawks racist? I’ve been a fan my whole life and I believe that the logo needs to be changed, but I don’t know of any others things that would make them blatantly racist. This is not an attack just a question.
Published
just moving along like everyone else 