The screenshot above, taken from CBS's broadcast of Sunday's football game between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs, caused an online controversy after it was posted on Twitter on Sunday night. It seems to depict a double-dose of racism—a white kid in blackface wearing a traditionally native American headdress—and people were (understandably) appalled at such a blatantly racist image. But a look at the context of the photo reveals that this is a photo illustrating the impossibly complex maze of racism in America.
The missing context in a seemingly racist photograph
Given the disturbing history of blackface, it's not surprising that people would react with anger at the sight of it on national television. But a straight-on picture of the fan reveals that only half of his face is painted black. The other half is red. Red and black: the Chiefs' colors.
Maybe a white person painting any part of their face black is problematic regardless, but intent is important, and the makeup seems more likely to be part of the tradition of sports fans painting their faces with team colors than a reference to minstrel shows. If he'd been an Eagles' fan, it would have been green and white, and we wouldn't be talking about it at all.
But it gets even more complex when you consider the "cultural appropriation" of the feathered headdress. Wearing Native American gear is generally regarded as a shitty thing for a white person to do, but the young fan in question is reportedly Native American himself. His grandfather, reportedly, is Raul Armenta, who sits on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, Calif. The Chumash didn't wear feathered warbonnets though—that was a plains Indian thing, a group thousands of miles from the Chumash's west coast home. See what I mean by complicated? Inter-tribal-cultural-appropriation aside, I think most people would agree that this fan's attire at the game was perhaps not the most sensitive choice, but it's far from a hate crime.
How racist is the NFL?
The knee-jerk reaction of many to the fan's appearance during the game was "The NFL is racist." True, the NFL has a troubling history of racism, but the NFL isn't football. The early days of the game itself point to the possibility of a more egalitarian professional football league that never came to be.
Organized football was always racist—this is America after all—but the contributions of both Native and African Americans to the formation of the sport are undeniable, and the early days of collegiate and pro football were less segregated than the NFL later became. Black players and player/coaches were vital to the success of early college football powerhouses like Nebraska, Ohio State, and Cornell beginning in the late 1800s, and Charles W. Follis (aka "The Black Cyclone") led the Shelby Blues to an 8-1-1 season in 1904 in the professional Ohio League.
It was different down south of course, and this was pre-integration, so there weren't many African American students at universities to begin with, but football in its early days was seen by some as an exemplification of American equality. Ideally, it was open to all who were courageous enough to step onto the gridiron, no matter who they were. But real life has a way of failing to live up to lofty ideals, especially when things become more structured and racism becomes institutionalized. In other words: Enter the National Football League.
The NFL wasn't fully segregated to start with. In the two years after the league (then called the American Professional Football Association) was formed in 1920, not only were there a handful of Black players, African American hall-of-fame running back Fritz Pollard was the head coach of the Akron Pros. But even though the NFL's segregation was never explicit, it may as well have been. A "gentleman's agreement" among team owners in the mid 1920s limited the number of Black players allowed to play in the league, and by 1934, there were no African American players left in the NFL. It wasn't until 1947 that the league was reintegrated.
These days, the NFL owns up publicly to its racist past, and proudly proclaims its intention to "End Racism" on end zones and team uniforms, but how they're actually going about the racism-ending is unclear. It is clear that race isn't a barrier to entry in the NFL any longer, nor is it a barrier to stardom—Patrick Mahomes is a household name. But on the other hand, there's the dual attorneys-general investigation of the league for racial, sexual, and ageist discrimination, the Colin Kapernick situation, and on and on. There's also the league's relationship with Native Americans.
Native Americans and football
Native Americans have been intertwined with football since the game began, and not as racist mascots. Jim Thorpe, a member of Sac and Fox Nation did more to popularize football in its early days than just about anyone. Thorpe lead the Canton Bulldogs to unofficial professional world championships in 1916, 1917, and 1919. Thorpe cut his football teeth on Glenn "Pop" Warner's squad, the Indians, a team of Native Americans from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. If you like the forward pass, you can thank the Carlisle Indians, who perfected the play, leading to a 14 year record of 167–88–13 playing against well-funded college teams like Yale and Princeton. But again, it's complicated: the Carlisle School may have had a great football squad, but the institution's focus on assimilation as an antidote to segregation was part of the US's ongoing cultural genocide against Native people, and the football program could be seen as part of that.
Native Americans were ultimately "thanked" for their contributions to football with organizations like the Washington Redskins, who clung to their racist name until 2020, long passed the point that any "but it was a different time" arguments had any merit.
As for the K.C. Chiefs, the team is named for H. Roe "Chief" Bartle, the mayor who brought pro football to Kansas City in 1960, so the squad's name isn't based on Native Americans. But the organization definitely used (and uses) harmful, stereotypical Native American imagery heavily for promotion. So do the fans; just look at the "Tomahawk Chop."
In response to accusations of insensitivity, in 2014 the Chiefs initiated a dialogue with the American Indian Community Working Group, a collection of leaders from American Indian communities around Kansas City, and took many of their suggestions on how to seem less bigoted and dial down the cultural appropriation. One of the rules the Chiefs say they adopted is "the outright banning of headdresses and face paint at the stadium on gameday." I guess they aren't too strict about that one.
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