Because You Never Asked

     (This essay was written way back in 1993 and has become timely again in August of 2005 due to a recent dictate of the National Collegiate Athletic Association calling for a ban on all mascots or nicknames having to do with Native Americans. This has provoked a debate our culture has had before, as evidenced by this 12 year old essay. Back when it was first written, it was considered "politically correct" to side with the "Indians". As I put this essay up on my website more than a decade later, I'm surprised to find the "politically correct" attitude now on the other side. Perhaps the mega-marketing money aspects of such teams as the Florida Seminoles and Atlanta Braves have trumped the "bleeding heart" consciousness of those recognizing the degrading aspects of all this. In any event, my bleeding heart continues to bleed, and I will not back down from what was written in this essay so long ago.)

     As I alluded to in the previous essay, it might be said that baseball is the only one of our major sports not to have insulted itself with an increased level of violence in order to sell tickets. With the exception of an occasional bean ball provocation or a particularly spicy attempt to break up a double play, the game doesn't lend itself to that rap music sneer and can still be played with a spirit that can almost qualify as friendly. Witness such moments as the light hearted first baseman-runner relationship, or the whimsical banter that often rebounds from catcher to batter.

     This lack of violence should not call into question the manly nature of the sport. Lest we forget, there is an extremely hard object flying around at blinding speeds that must be confronted both as a batter standing in to it and a fielder not giving ground to it. Have you ever been hit in the privates by a speeding baseball? Try forgetting that! Add to this mix the routine arrival at the same time and place of two grown men and the aforementioned rock hard object, plus collisions with stubbornly stationary walls and waywardly advancing teammates in hot pursuit of the same ball, and any argument denigrating the courage needed to play the game must be considered erroneous.

     For the gourmet baseball fan, the main course over the last few seasons has been the almost poetic ascent of the Atlanta Braves, the team with the Midas touch. Rarely have all the parts of a fine tuned machine been assembled with more precision. There is a meticulously measured blending of ingredients --- of youth and experience, power and finesse, all mixed and churned by a shrewd coaching staff --- that could almost be set forth like a Julia Childs recipe. There's a bevy of cocky young arms to mow them down, a solid bench, a pregnant farm system, and, most of all, an ample supply of miracles; can anyone ever forget Otis Nixon's flying catch or the pennant saving hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth by . what was that guy's name?

     But the exceptional quality of this wonderful baseball team is not the reason for this essay, but rather, another socio-cultural question made prominent by the team's success: the propriety of what has now become the Atlanta fan's trademark, the "tomahawk chop", and the sensitivities of the American Indian.

     The tomahawk chop is a white man's idea of an Indian chant, complete with the hatchet-like object us white folk call a tomahawk, brandished in a way us white folk feel an Indian would do such a thing when going to war . or doing whatever us white folk think an Indian might be doing. Whether the Indians ever did anything approximating this is open to debate, but, as we shall see, who the hell cares anyway?

     The chop and chant originated at Florida State University but its adoption by the Braves fans gave it an exposure far beyond the bounds of a regional collegiate football power. One must remember that CNN's Ted Turner owns the ball club and his cable network carries the team's games to all corners of the country for 7 months. This was not the first time the co-option of Indian culture had struck a sensitive nerve, but this was as ripe a moment for such feelings to reach prominence as ever there was . pennant races, the World Series, etc.

     There is something about the chop and chant that is particularly powerful. If the Indians actually did something similar to what is now heard in Atlanta, it was undoubtedly used as some kind of communal motivation device, just as the honky baseball fans now use it. Its sound has a narcotic-like effect, like a song you can't stand but can't stop humming. The whole thing, spurred on by the success of the club, caught on, and a mantra-like addiction took hold of the masses.

     Obviously, the baseball fans performing the chop and chant consider it an innocuous form of fun not meant to insult anyone. Unfortunately, there are a not insignificant amount of Native Americans who don't see it that way. Being that there are so few of them around, the debate generally ends up taking place amongst the rest of us. The white bread consensus is that the Indians should lighten up, what's the big deal, it's all in good fun . gee whiz!

     I suppose those of us who are not the remnant survivors of a genocidal past might not relate to such sensitivities.

     I suggest that any non-Indian's opinion on the subject is about as relevant as a man trying to explain the child birth experience or a woman trying to feel what it's like to be hit you know where by a bad hop grounder. What particularly caught my attention was the black fans gleefully chopping away. In much the same way the poorest, most disadvantaged whites in the old south were also the most racist, today's black man, given the chance to be the "whuppor" instead of the "whuppee", reveled in the role. One might think that the black man, given what this group has had to endure in the New World, would sympathize with the plight of the Indian. Funny how it almost never works out that way.

     The tomahawk chop controversy reinforces something we as a society have trouble admitting; the conquering Occidental culture has never given a buffalo turd for what the Indians think, and, with some slightly enlightened gambling casino adjustments, still doesn't.

     Get lost and play ball!