Mascots must change

Thank you for Donna Loring’s OpEd column “Torn between a legacy and a logo” (BDN, Oct. 20-21) and Maulian Dana’s letter “Racist mascots” (BDN, Oct. 22). I agree with them that Chief Wahoo, the official mascot of the Cleveland Indians, is racist.

If the Cleveland baseball team was called the Negroes, and their mascot was a stupid-looking black-faced minstrel, we would all know it was racist. Or if the team was called the Jews, and they had a cartoon of a buck-toothed Orthodox rabbi on their caps, we would find it intolerable. So why, then, does Major League Baseball tolerate the stupidly grinning Chief Wahoo cartoon mascot?

If the owners of the Cleveland team want to honor Louis Sockalexis, the Penobscot baseball great who played for Cleveland from 1897 to 1899, they have the ability to find a respectful way to do so. But the Chief Wahoo mascot is a racist insult.

Despite the protests of Native Americans, the NAACP, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, the owners of the Cleveland team continue to use the racist cartoon mascot.

I am thrilled the Boston Red Sox have eliminated Cleveland, and now we won’t have to look at Chief Wahoo’s stupid grin again until next spring. But Wahoo will be back unless the American public demands an end to this type of racist stereotyping.

Rev. Mark Worth

Unitarian Universalist Congregation

Castine