Controversial Mascots: Authority and Racial Hegemony in the Maintenance of Deviant Symbols

Abstract

Mascots are designed to represent athletic teams to fans while allowing violence and aggression to play out symbolically. Although mascots rarely evoke anger because of perceived offensiveness, teams that utilize Native American symbolism (NAS) are embracing a contested practice in the United States. Using the Cleveland Indians and their mascot, “Chief Wahoo,” I consider NAS as a negotiation between those who want to preserve NAS, retention advocates (RAs), and challengers who wish to remove such mascots. I analyze letters to the editor and editorials in newspapers over a fifteen-year period (n = 397) concerning the argument that Cleveland should change the name of its team, change the use of Chief Wahoo, or both. Guided by conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, and literature on racial hegemony, I find that pro—Chief Wahoo arguments are grounded in the importance of consistency in sports symbols and a series of public accounts that minimize harm and challenge NAS challengers, ideas that assume a colorblind society. In contrast, challengers frame NAS in terms of political or cultural opposition. The article concludes by considering how these perspectives on NAS represent a failed negotiation. Because RA perspectives, grounded in white racial hegemony, benefit from social structure, challengers are forced to attempt to align themselves with RAs' cultural values or overlap with a prosports perspective. Each of these options renders challenger perspectives ineffective, further strengthening current social structure.