There's no good reason why Kansas City's football team still has that name

On anti-heroes

Top notes:

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this topic. The last time was on Super Bowl Sunday, 2020, a few months before America had a putative racial reckoning. It’s worth noting that, while I have written a mostly new essay, I could have basically just reprinted the old one verbatim. That little has changed.

With that in mind, I am once again making a donation to the Kansas City Indian Center. They’re doing incredible work on so many fronts. If you have the means, I encourage you to support them as well.

In the meantime, I appreciate you so much for welcoming me into your inboxes and social feeds. The last time I wrote an essay about Kansas City’s football team, there were a few hundred of you here. Today, there are close to nine thousand (and growing). I’m truly grateful for all of you. Thanks for supporting/challenging/loving/tolerating The White Pages.

“Great father, you Whites treat us Kaws like a flock of turkeys. You chase us to one stream, then you chase us to another stream. Soon you will chase us over the mountains and into the ocean, and we will have no place to live.”

-Kaw Chief Allegawaho, 1872

Believe me, I really want to just revel in the current celebrity gossip topic du jour. It is so far up my alley that, under normal circumstances, I’d probably owe it rent. It involves the confluence of professional sports (which I very much enjoy) as well as the public presentation of one Ms. Taylor Swift (ditto).

If you have not heard the news, Ms. Swift recently attended an NFL game on the outskirts of Kansas City, Missouri. She did so because she may or may not be dating NFL star Travis Kelce, a very large man with a legitimately endearing smile.

Again, I can’t stress how much this is my kind of story (I have strong opinions both about the top five sports brothers of all time AND the top five Swift songs of all time).¹ The more layers you peal back of this one, the more intriguing it gets. There’s even a prominent subplot involving iconic Midwestern condiments (namely which sauces Ms. Swift consumed alongside her game-time fried chicken).

“Seemingly ranch!” That’s literally my favorite condiment!

I mean, we’re having fun, right? That’s what L’affaire Traylor is all about. It is silly and innocuous while also being big business (there are no doubt multiple PR machines working overtime to bring it to our attention). It raises both the question of whether we should be this obsessed with the comings and goings of a single female pop superstar, as well as the partial reassurance that, because this is Taylor Swift, we’re likely only seeing what she wants us to see. Most of all, it is chock full of ridiculous little details. Kelce and Swift drove off in a convertible, one of the funniest possible cars! When they walked out of the stadium together, she was dressed like a normal human being but he looked like he had just defeated a blue cow in battle and had draped himself in his enemy’s hide!

Congratulations to Travis Kelce, who may or may not be dating Taylor Swift but who clearly strikes fear in the hearts of blue cows everywhere.

You see how badly I want to just revel in the jokes and second-hand speculation? But there’s just one problem with all the breathless media coverage of this pop culture-meets-sports mashup. It’s not Taylor Swift’s fault, because it’s the same problem every week that Kansas City’s football team plays a game.

Ugh. You know where this is going.

That’s Taylor Swift, who is indeed “doing a little dance” (a relatively innocuous shimmy). It’s not her I’m concerned about (in this case, ahem, “SHE/ it’s not her/she’s not the problem/it’s not she,” and yes I’m so sorry for that). It’s the fact that she’s surrounded by thousands of people engaging in a shared kinesthetic racial slur (the infamous “tomahawk.chop”). They’re doing so, of course, because Kansas City’s professional football team is called “the Chiefs” and they play in “Arrowhead Stadium” and somehow for the past forty eight hours the Internet has been abuzz with headlines that make no mention of the fact that, well, this is all pretty messed up, right?

Again, this isn’t Taylor’s fault. She’s just the reason a larger audience is talking about the Kansas City Chiefs right now. The problem starts with this guy.

That’s Harold Roe Bartle.

Bartle was a White man who liked to play Indian. He loved dressing up in faux-Native regalia and making people call him “Chief.” The one problem was that he wasn’t actually a Chief, nor was he Indigenous. He had no ties whatsoever to the Shawnees and Osage (the tribes that once called the area around Kansas City home), nor the Kaw (the tribe from whom the word “Kansas” and therefore “Kansas City” is derived).

There’s nothing unique about that story, of course. Of course Kansas City’s name is “borrowed” from a tribe that was subsequently forced to live hundreds of miles away. Of course that town has long been home to various White guy weirdos who liked dressing up in fake headdresses. There are hundreds of American municipalities that share those two stories.

What’s unique to Kansas City, though, was that their cosplaying weirdo happened to be a multi-term mayor, a larger-than-life figure who lured the Dallas Texans football team north to the bustling city at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. The “Chief” delivered the goods, so it was only natural that the team be renamed in his honor.

Harold Roe Bartle died in 1974. His wife Margaret once claimed that “he could do anything on this earth that he sets out to do.” I have no doubt that he would be immensely pleased to learn that his beloved football team still bears his self-proclaimed nickname.

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The Kansas City Chiefs have long gotten a pass in popular discourse around anti-Indigenous racism. It’s not that they’re doing anything particularly well, it’s just that they were never as ham-fistedly egregious as their football league-mates in Washington D.C. or their baseball cousins in Cleveland. If you’re going to build a lucrative brand on the backs of racism and vague memories of Cigar Store Indians, it helps if the other guys doing the same are dumber and uglier than you.

On one hand, I get it. Do you remember the old Cleveland baseball logo? Or the Washington football nickname? By comparison, it’s easy for change-weary White people to squint at the names “Braves” and “Chiefs” and convince ourselves that those are just benevolent tributes. It’s no wonder why— after Cleveland and Washington were finally forced to re-brand— non-Indigenous America dusted off our hands, decided that was enough atonement and just went on with our lives.

In essence, we told ourselves, those other names aren’t that great either, but who are they really hurting?

Here’s a quick story about mascots.

I used to teach fifth grade on the Navajo Nation. At some point during my first year in the classroom, I came into possession of a large number of ‘80s and ‘90s baseball cards, which I repurposed as campy class incentives. My kids loved them because most of the players were super silly looking and had funny mustaches. None of my fifth graders were baseball fans, so these cards were their first encounter with MLB team names and mascots. In retrospect, I hadn’t thought that part through.

I still remember the moment that I realized what a doofus I was. It was the end of the day. I had just handed out some cards and a small huddle of kids was admiring their stashes together. Out of nowhere, a single, excited voice shoots up from the throng. “MR. BUCKS, THIS IS AWESOME! YOU NEVER TOLD US THAT THERE WAS A WHOLE TEAM JUST OF INDIANS!”

I don’t remember how badly I flubbed the subsequent conversation, but I do remember how that student’s energy just completely collapsed as I stuttered through an explanation that no, Cleveland’s team wasn’t a proud cadre of Indigenous ballplayers honoring their heritage. I remember even more clearly what happened as they scanned the card again, looking not just at the “Indians” name on the jersey, but the grinning Chief Wahoo on the player’s hat. They hadn’t noticed that detail the first time. Shoulders dropped down. Eyes went blank. There was no rage, just resignation.

“Oh, so they’re making fun of us?”

Believe it or not, I honestly try to avoid writing essays like this, essays that primarily consist of me, a White guy, pointing out that something that we all know to be racist is, in fact, racist. I worry they’re too smug and self-congratulatory, that they’re inevitably just preaching to the choir.

Every few years, though, I can’t help myself. In the past, it’s been when the Chiefs made one of their frequent appearances in the Super Bowl and the airwaves were blanketed with fawning coverage of Patrick Mahomes’ world-conquering quarterbacking abilities or Andy Reid’s legacy as a coach. This time, it’s because a global pop superstar ate chicken with “supposedly ranch” in a luxury suite.

In each case, I know I’m unlikely to change hearts and mind with a haughty diatribe. But that’s not why I write these particular essays. I write because the cognitive dissonance is too much to bear. I write because I can’t process the fact that we’re discussing completion percentages and gossip page intrigue as if Kansas City has some anodyne animal mascot. I write because I see article after article with “Chiefs” headlines and suddenly I’m back in my fifth grade classroom and a bunch of Navajo kids are putting the pieces together in real-time.

I live in a sports-crazed Midwestern city. I love taking my kids to Brewers and Bucks games. We eat too much popcorn and high five strangers and cross our fingers that Bango Buck or Bernie Brewer might visit our section. I have many friends from Kansas City who treasure those same memories, just with the Royals and the Chiefs. I get why one of the most frequently cited defenses of retaining Native mascots is the decade-long bonds that [mostly White] fans have with those names. Those monikers and traditions connect parents with children, reminding both of treasured childhood memories in the stands.

I don’t doubt these emotional bond exists. But that’s actually what makes the whole situation so heinous. Our best collective defense, when we’re told that we’re desecrating the history of hundreds of sovereign nations, is that our personal emotions matter more than other human beings’ basic dignity. Our passions flare not because Indigenous life expectancy is 5.5 years lower than the general U.S. population, but because there’s a possibility that we may have to buy a different jersey for our daughter than the one our parents once purchased for us.

The reason why tens of thousands of Midwesterners gather in Arrowhead Stadium every Sunday to tomahawk chop their beloved home team to victory is the same reason why Kansas and Missouri don’t belong to the Osage, Shawnee, or Kaw any more. Americans, particularly White Americans, will avoid even the most minor of inconveniences if we can get away with it. That’s why, on this particular issue, it took us decades to do the absolute minimum— there is no longer a team called the R*********. An embarrassingly low bar, if you think about it. But to reconsider the team named after the vainglorious cosplaying mayor? Or put an end to all that tomahawk chopping down in Atlanta? Well, that’s just asking for too much.

That quote at the top of this essay was spoken by Chief Allegawaho to then Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano. He was desparately pleading his case. At that point, his tribe had already ping ponged across Kansas, dodging settlers, smallpox and the looming threat of the U.S. Calvary. He begged for schools, food, and assistance for his devastated people. He asked, at the very least, to remain in the U.S. State that bore his people’s name.

Delano heard those pleas— about how the White man chased the Kaw around as if they were turkey— but it didn’t change his mind. There were too many settlers streaming into Kansas and Missouri, too many White people who didn’t want to be inconvenienced. To stop the chase would have required admitting that we were doing something wrong.

In 1873, the Kaw were pushed out to Oklahoma, to a reservation that the Osage had been sent to just a few years previously. It didn’t matter if they had an eloquent leader: White people weren’t done chasing yet.

This past weekend, one of the most famous people in the world went to a football game. Thanks to breathless news and social media coverage, the world now knows what she wore, who she left with, and what car they drove off in. Lost in the headlines was a solitary press release from the Kansas City Indian Center’s “Not In Our Honor” Campaign.

The request was simple.

We remain hopeful that an outside influence like Ms. Swift could be an ally for us in moving the conversation forward on why the chop is a racist act. To us, that hand gesture is synchronized racism. We implore Ms. Swift to take the time to understand our perspective and the scientific and psychological research into the harm to youth and communities caused by such behavior. We ask for people to learn about our shared history, the real history of this country, not the sanitized version many learned in school. Our culture was stripped from us and we were not allowed to practice it for hundreds of years, yet our culture continues to be mocked for sport and profit despite decades of protest by Natives and Native organizations and recommendations by national psychological, educational and sociological associations.

In the weeks to come, I have no doubt that the world will learn whether Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are or aren’t dating. I fully expect the Kansas City Chiefs, who completely demolished the Chicago Bears on Sunday, to continue to win a number of football games. And I expect non-Indigenous America to carry on with business as usual. I expect that we’ll tacitly accept the name, the chant and everything that goes along with it, for no reason other than we just can’t be bothered to change.

Tragically, White America is still not done chasing. No matter how many land acknowledgments we offer, we still treat our Indigenous neighbors as if they are less than human. And I know that one more self-righteous essay won’t change that, but the least we can do is to stop pretending that all of this is justifiable and inevitable.

We don’t have to accept more uncritical headlines about the Kansas City Chiefs.

We always have the choice to stop chasing.

END NOTES:

If you don’t want to have to scroll up to find that link to support the Kansas City Indian Center, it’s right here.

In more personal news: If you’ve pre-ordered a copy of The Right Kind of White (a very cool move, one which I selfishly but earnestly recommend), don’t forget to fill out the form to get a thank you gift. I’ve heard from a lot of folks who’ve said “I preordered!” and I truly love you for it, but I also want to thank you more formally.

Oh, and the song of the week? Even though Washington D.C.’s football team no longer has an egregious name, my commitment to you is that as long as I write about the issue of racist mascots, I will be picking the same song.

If you’re not familiar, just trust me.

1. Ok, I’ll prove it: With apologies to the Kelce brothers, the best sports brothers are 1. Giannis/Thanassis/Alex Antetokounmpo. 2. Brook and Robin Lopez. 3. Jrue/Justin/Aaron Holliday, 4. Jackie and Mack Robinson and 5. Cal and Billy Ripken (yes, I’m mostly naming Milwaukee Bucks; the heart loves what it loves). Meanwhile, the best five Swift songs are: 1. All Too Well (either version) 2. Exile. 3. Holy Ground. 4. Ours. 5. This Is Me Trying