Sunday night, Kansas City ended a 50-year drought by winning Super Bowl LIV 31-20 while once again erasing another deficit, this one being at 10-points with just over seven minutes remaining in the fourth.
Not only that, it was a Patrick Mahomes third and 15 bomb that finally signaled that KC turnaround in the fourth when he hit Tyreek Hil for 44 yards setting things up for a late 21-0 run and the eventual win.
Mahomes went on to win the MVP becoming the youngest player to do so and the NFL season finally came to an end.
Great.
We’d be amiss though to gloss over the fact that the team that won Super Bowl LIV continues to this day to condone racism amongst their fans and within the organization itself via cultural appropriation of natives.
The “Chiefs” name in and of itself came after former KC Mayor H. Roe Bartle persuaded the franchise to move from Texas to his city in the early 1960’s. “Chiefs” was adopted in large part due to Bartle — who was a white guy — founded the Tribe of Mic-O-Say within the Boy Scouts of America organization where white kids could basically go to this day camp and play Indians.
However, as cultural “wokeness” somewhat evolved to the point today where Cleveland finally started to do away with their undoubtedly racist native characterure in “Chief Wahoo” or the University of Illinois retiring their “Indian” logos, the “Chiefs” have made little to completely zero progress when it comes to eliminating the racism and cultural appropriation within their own franchise and fanbase.
Throughout Arrowhead Stadium and even last night during the Super Bowl I’m sure you couldn’t help but notice the war chants and drums being played during the KC introductions or throughout the game itself. Or the fact that you still have a myriad of fans wearing headdresses and red face paint.
And of course, the blowback from this will be from white people who will claim that they’re somehow honoring native culture by reducing native customs and traditions to strategies to hype up fans for a football game. All while the United States continues to oppress the native people of this land by hoarding them into crowded reservations while the majority screams for them to assimilate to “American Culture”.
Seriously, if you truly want to honor the native people of this stolen land, start out by reading a fucking book to get a better idea of how this group was completely fucked over by American imperialism which continues to this day.
Via Vox:
The man I spoke to was also a military veteran. He refused to believe that his dressing up as a Native American is cultural appropriation, instead saying the clothing and dances “honor” Native Americans by continuing their traditions.
asked him how he feels about people who pretend to be veterans when they are not. That is what the Native headdress equates to: Chiefs went to battle and earned it, much like the medals military veterans earn. But he refused to see the correlation.
But none of this is surprising.
Not in a league that continues to condone the use of the name “Redskins” or as white owners and the majority in the United States continue to try and dictate when an “appropriate time” to protest racial injustice should take place because sports should be some “escape from everyday life”.
And if you want to go ahead and have some conversation about changing the name of the “Fighting Irish” or “Vikings” because of a name adopted by white people is somehow offensive to white people, go right ahead. Change if its deemed necessary.
As far as trying to make those dictations against natives because you want to be entertained or want to maintain your racist traditions in a sports team, yeah, I’m sorry that’s not how this shit works. At least not anymore.
