"ON SEEING WITH NEW HEARTS AND NEW EYES"

 “ON SEEING WITH NEW HEARTS AND EYES”

The Atlanta baseball team recently won the World Series, in a surprising run.  I was surprised on several levels, the main one being that I had declared that the Atlanta baseball team would never win another World Series because the team refused to change its racist name from the “B-word” to something like the “Atlantans” (my preference) or the “Hammers” (as my son David and others advocate).  Keeping “Hammers” would allow them to keep the egregious “chop” by changing it to hammer strokes, and of course the greatest Atlanta player was Hammerin’ Hank Aaron.  For more on this struggle see our friend John Blake’s fine CNN online article about this.  https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/31/us/atlanta-braves-history-racism-blake/index.html

The baseball gods were not with me, however, and the Atlantans won the World Series in convincing fashion.  There was some controversy generated by their name, but the white owners of the team responded that they would keep the “B-word” as the name.  They even brought out Chief Noc-a-Homa to defend the name and the chop.  When we first moved to the Atlanta area in 1983, we would take 

David and Susan to see the Atlanta team play in old Fulton County stadium.  In the stands behind left/center field, they had built a teepee, and they had Chief Noc-a-Homa, a Native American,  bless the field before each home game.  When the Atlantans hit a home run in those days, Chief Noc-a-Homa would run around the field and whoop and celebrate.  He is still alive at age 79, and Atlanta TV stations played a recent interview with him.  He strongly defended the “B-word” as appropriate, defending the “chop” as well.  

It reminded me of a trip that Caroline, Susan and I had made to the Eastern Shore of Maryland a couple of years ago to look for Wallace ancestors and to look at Easton, Maryland.  Easton was now claiming Frederick Douglass as an ancestor, on the approximate 200th anniversary of his birth in the area.   We went into a used bookstore in Easton to seek to find some postcards to send to our granddaughters.  The white, male proprietor of the store noticed my Baltimore Orioles baseball cap, and he asked me if we were from Baltimore.  When I replied that Susan was but I was not, he asked why anyone not from Baltimore would wear the cap of the last place baseball team.  I replied that it was a gift from my daughter, but also that I could not wear the cap of my home team, the Atlantans, until they changed their racist name and images.  He looked puzzled and asked if I meant “the Braves.”  When I replied that I did, he then launched into an explanation of why the name “Braves” and its accompanying tomahawk chop and images were not racist, but were rather honoring the fierceness and courage of Native American peoples. 

            My response was that the Atlantans had not consulted with the Native American tribes of the land (mostly Creek and Cherokee) about their opinions of the baseball traditions.  Indeed, the comments of Native American culture are that such usage is demeaning and racist, especially since those tribes do not receive any of the millions of dollars generated by the use of their images.  He replied that the Native Americans should not be insulted by it, because it was not intended as racist.  Since I did not know him, I wanted to add, but I did not, that it was arrogant but not surprising of us white men to believe that we knew better about the opinions of other cultures than those cultures themselves did.  We have pronounced it, and it must be so. 

            In this Native American Heritage Month (or American Indian Heritage Month), let those of us who are classified as “white” be reminded of our terrible history in regard to Native Americans.  Let us remember our emphasis in the system of race that our intentions are much more important to us than the outcomes of our actions.  As this Anglo man stated, if white folk didn’t express an intention of racism, then our actions couldn’t be seen as racist.  Lest this seem like ancient history, it is the current SCOTUS position.

            But, as we experience this Month, let us also consider the many positive gifts of Native American heritage, and at this time in our lives, none seems more important that their reverence for Mother Earth compared to the Anglo ravaging of the earth.  As the icecaps and glaciers melt;  as the fires of the West burn;  as the typhoons and hurricanes and tornadoes blow;  as the temperatures and sea levels rise – in light of these and so much more, nothing seems more vital to all of us than to go back and learn from these cultures who understand the powerful and complex links between all circles of life in the earth and the universe.  I’ll look at this more next week, but for now, let us hear that our ancestors and our grandchildren cry out to us to learn and live this respect.  Let us see with new hearts and new eyes.