April 7, 2014

DeChief

For opening day this year my company allowed us to dress-down in Indians gear. As a protest against the offensive caricature of Chief Wahoo, on opening day I "deChiefed" an old shirt. 
And I tweeted it (Yes, I'm on Twitter too.) with the hashtag #deChief. It was inspired by a Twitter user @DeChiefWahoo and I think it's a great way to show that we like our baseball team but hate the racist grinning mascot.

Everyone who supports/loves Wahoo uses the same two arguments: 1. It's tradition. and 2. It's not offensive to me.
Listen: 1. Slavery was traditional once too. Just because your grandpa always said n*gger doesn't mean it's okay. And 2. Blackface minstrel shows weren't offensive to the crowds of white people in the audiences, but that doesn't make them acceptable.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is: after getting a couple of re-tweets and such, I got a request from ABC News to use the image. And it brought to my attention that I had not officially posted on my blog about my disgust of Wahoo. (All over Facebook, other people's blogs, but not here.)

2 comments:

kurt schwochow said...

gots to go scenario

Emily Colby said...

Make sure ABC gives you the photo credit and you retain copyright.

You're welcome.