berserker said:
Chief. Is not a racist remarks.
That's great although I didn't say that "Chief" was a "racist remark". What I said was that when you were talking about the person this logo is supposedly honouring you didn't use his name but rather referred to him as "a chief" which, to my mind, emphasized the point the groups who are opposed to this sort of "honour" tend to make which is that it dehumanizes people and presents them as mascots.
Both the Cleveland Baseball Team and Washington Football Team who have agreed to change their names used to justify their own team names by claiming they were "honouring" people but rather than actually referring to these people simply used a stand in word(or, in Washington's case, slur) for that person's entire race. This is, I think, a pretty lousy honour. The equivalent of deciding to honour, say, someone like Jonas Salk by naming a Medical School "The Jewish Guy Medical School" instead of, you know, his name.
Black Hawk was a real person who we know quite a bit about, including what he looked like. The Chicago logo does not represent him very well and, again, reduces him to effectively a mascot which is something that the American Psychological Association says does real damage to people. The name/logo is understandably opposed by many prominent Native groups.
Also, and this is where I'm happy to say I'm quite a ways out of my depths, but in my brief reading on the subject I don't think Black Hawk was "a Chief" in the way we think of them today.
