SI: Why Does MLB Still Allow Synchronized, Team-Sanctioned Racism in Atlanta?

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During World Series Games 3, 4 and 5, a nationwide television audience will see a largely white crowd mocking a people its ancestors tried to erase

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Seven months ago, Major League Baseball moved the All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to institutional racism. On Friday, it will hold the World Series there—and this time, MLB is the institution supporting racism.

The name “Braves” is bad enough. Fans might see it as honoring Native Americans, but in equating them to Tigers and Cardinals, it dehumanizes them. Beyond the name, though, the crowd’s favorite gesture, known as the tomahawk chop, is unconscionable. At every home game, fans raise and lower their right arms in unison, howling a mock war chant. “It’s offensive,” says Claudio Saunt, a professor at Georgia who specializes in Native American history. “I also find it kind of embarrassing, just knowing that the whole country is seeing it on national TV.”

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Evidently. The tomahawk chop is sanctioned by the team, and therefore by MLB. In 2017, commissioner Rob Manfred began to pressure Cleveland to “transition away” from its Chief Wahoo caricature; eventually Cleveland dropped both the mascot and the Indians name. In April, Manfred relocated the All-Star Game to Denver after Georgia passed a law that made it more difficult for people—especially Black people—to vote. Yet Atlanta can lead its fans in a racist chant throughout the game, and MLB does nothing—and therefore supports it.

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Most Native American groups disagree. In large, they say that, given those serious issues, it is especially cruel to have thousands of people making fun of Native Americans at a baseball game. “It is overtly racist,” says Aaron Payment, secretary of the National Congress of American Indians and chairperson of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. “Whether people understand it or not, it’s overtly racist.”

NCAI president Fawn Sharp released a statement on Wednesday criticizing Manfred's comments. It read, in part, "The name ‘Braves,’ the tomahawk adorning the team’s uniform, and the ‘tomahawk chop’ that the team exhorts its fans to perform at home games are meant to depict and caricature not just one tribal community but all Native people, and that is certainly how baseball fans and Native people everywhere interpret them. ... In our discussions with the Atlanta Braves, we have repeatedly and unequivocally made our position clear – Native people are not mascots, and degrading rituals like the ‘tomahawk chop’ that dehumanize and harm us have no place in American society."

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Game 1 of the NLCS featured 14 chops; Game 2, 20; Game 6, 24, including three on consecutive pitches. Roughly half of these were instigated by fans; the rest were team-initiated, complete with music piped over the PA system and graphics splashed across the jumbotron. During each pitching change, the team went so far as to darken the stadium to set the mood, as fans used their cellphones while they chopped to create a racist light show. And the spectacle travels: During Game 4, which Atlanta won 9–2, a few chops broke out at Dodger Stadium.

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Georgia, though, has a lot to do with Native American culture. It was largely due to the state’s influence that the Indian Removal Act of 1830 passed. That law led to the Trail of Tears, the forced migration of some 100,000 people from the southeast to territory in what is now Oklahoma. Some 15,000 people died along the way. The Indian Removal Act was one of the most contentious pieces of legislation to that point; it passed the House of Representatives by only four votes. All seven of Georgia’s members of Congress voted yea.

“Georgia played a really oversized role in formulating Indian policy and Indian removal,” says Saunt. “Without Georgia’s politicians pushing it on the national stage, [the Indian Removal Act] would not have unfolded in the way it did.”

“I have maps—there were Cherokee families living right near Truist Park who were forced out of their homes by state militia in 1838,” Saunt says. “It’s very personal.

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“It’s like if someone denigrated Christianity or 9/11 jumpers,” says Brett Chapman, a Native American rights attorney and enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation who is a vocal opponent of Native American mascots. He imagines 50,000 people in a stadium dressed as Jesus Christ or screaming gibberish in mockery of the national anthem. He imagines the reaction that would get.

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