With news that Washington has officially decided to retire its team name, the focus could soon shift to the Kansas City Chiefs.
I already know what you’re thinking.
“But why? ‘Chiefs’ isn’t a racial slur like the Washington team name.”
The situations aren’t entirely alike — the Chiefs’ team name is decidedly not a racial slur like Washington’s. The problem is that the franchise continues to perpetuate racist stereotypes of Native Americans. Part of it has to do with the nature of the team name as it relates to Native American culture.
Some mental gymnastics, often utilized by fans to defend the name, is the origin of the team name. Yes, the team wasn’t directly named with Native Americans in mind. Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt and general manager Jack Steadman opted to name the franchise after Kansas City mayor, H. Roe Bartle, whose nickname was “The Chief.” His nickname, however, came from being a founding member of the Tribe of Mic-O-Say — a boy scout troop that wore Native American garb such as headdresses. That takes us to the crux of the issue.
Fans still flock to Arrowhead Stadium donning faux headdresses, they’re not banned from the stadium. Warpaint, the team’s mascot horse, appears to be a permanent fixture for Kansas City since the 50th anniversary of the team in 2009. The team even built a ‘drum deck’ for their pregame ritual, which helps lead fans in perhaps the most problematic item — The Tomahawk Chop.
The chop has become a fixture at Arrowhead Stadium. It’s practically synonymous with the gameday experience. It has become normalized to the extent that fans believe it’s entirely innocuous — that it doesn’t mock Native culture in any way. Even if the team decided to get rid of it, fans would probably partake themselves, it’s that embedded.
While these particular instances I’ve pointed out might not be offensive to all — they’re offensive to some Native Americans — and that’s a problem. How that imagery portrayed truly impacts Native people is also a problem. The biggest problem for the team, however, is that they don’t actively discourage these things from happening. In some cases, they still encourage them.
The Chiefs franchise deserves some credit, though. Every step of the way they’ve tried to be better. When the franchise first moved to Kansas City in 1963 they commissioned a logo that featured a caricature of a Native American, donning headdress and loincloth, whilst carrying a football and raising a tomahawk. It was a problematic and racist depiction of Native peoples.
When the team moved to Arrowhead Stadium in 1972, they moved away from that logo entirely, adopting the Arrowhead logo.
Later, they’d work to eliminate Native American imagery from all officially licensed NFL merchandise in an effort to quash any stereotypes perpetuated by the franchise.
Since 2014, the franchise has celebrated American Indian Heritage Month as part of its commitment to honoring the Native community. They take part in a number of pregame festivities and education opportunities for fans to honor and learn about Native culture.
The franchise has shown the willingness to listen and change, but what comes next? Sure, the franchise has done plenty of good to correct issues surrounding their team name. At what point does the team stop working to correct issues that persist and simply move away from the nickname causing those issues in the first place?
It might not happen tomorrow, but surely within the next year, this franchise will have to look themselves in the mirror and face some tough questions. The Chiefs are scheduled to play the NFC East and the newly-named Washington team in 2021, so perhaps that is when things will come to a turning point for Kansas City.
At the end of the day, it’ll take more than loud fans or critical headlines for the team to take action. The final straw for Washington was sponsors threatening to pull out of their deals if the team refused to change its name. And as Washington made clear in their official statement, keeping the sponsors happy was their top priority in this decision.
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