Don’t criticize Chiefs name, diversify: Let’s add the Samurai and the Tuskegee Airmen | Opinion
If it is Super Bowl season, it is time for another discussion about whether the Kansas City Chiefs’ team name and its associated traditions are racist. This year, California and New York have said yes with new laws they are implementing to purge Native American names and imagery from sports teams there.
I have a question about what they’ll have achieved. What is equal when the only human-related team names honoring an ethnic group’s prowess are white guys? Is that equality?
We’ll live in a world of 76ers and 49ers, Fighting Irish and Celtics, Crusaders and Pirates, Rebels and Minutemen — but nobody else.
I don’t think that is a step forward, and I am afraid the next step the more progressive among us are going to demand is to purge the white guys. That would be a more boring world where we could idealize the ferocity and power of Broncos and Lions, but not Vikings.
Here’s my thought: It has been 50 years since the civil rights revolution, so maybe the answer to Native American symbols and team names is for us to grow up. The answer isn’t less ethnicity, but more and better.
Why not honor the heroic Harlem Hellfighters, the 369th Infantry Regiment that fought in World War I after they became an early contribution to the French cause? Or what about a team named for the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II aviation fame?
Why not extol the virtues of the pioneering 1st Rhode Island Regiment, whose Black and Native American soldiers excelled under fire during the Revolutionary War and helped change George Washington’s mind about who was capable of fighting for the American cause?
We have the Spartans — why not the Janissaries for Middle Eastern Americans to cheer, or the Samurai? What is more a part of baseball than Japanese players? We could bring back the Cuban team name from the Negro Leagues.
We have the Kings, so why not the Pharaohs from Africa or the Huangdi, Sons of Heaven, for the Chinese emperors?
We could really stretch our linguistic chops and have a team named for the Cuāuhocēlōtl That’s Aztec for “Eagle Warriors,” who on a different day could have wiped out the Spanish conquistadores.
Speaking of the conquistadores, who weren’t such nice guys (and neither where the human-sacrificing Aztecs, come to think of it) — as we grow up about race and ethnicity, we don’t have to limit our team names just to those whom we can wholeheartedly admire. We have the Vikings and Pirates and Rebels, why not Kamikazes? Maybe we’re far enough from World War II to admire the self-sacrifice, bravery and patriotism of men whose suicidal tactic was so feared by American sailors.
And the image of Black and white young men who join together as the Fighting Irish and Mexican and Hawaiian young women who unite as the 369th will send the message that our diversity is our strength even as we honor different roots and heroes that reflect all our ancestors.
As we prepare for the Super Bowl and cheer for the Chiefs, we should think about the opportunity we’d miss if their name was gone.
