Letter: Atlanta Braves? Why not Atlanta Bananas?
Baseball is here and there’s new grass on the field. So it’s time to trot out the Atlanta Braves name controversy.
The first objection is the name: “Braves.” This is an English word, of course, not a tribal one. The word was first used by the painter George Catlin around 1816 to denote young male southwestern tribesmen who had not yet fought against an enemy.
The second is the “Tomahawk Chop.” The tomahawk was really the British Navy boarding axe. It was made out of iron. The tribesmen had the usual flaked rock tied to the stick version, but when they saw what iron could do they traded heavily for the iron head in the 17th century and attached that to a stick. It was used in war and as an axe tool. It was not quite used for scalping. That’s what a knife was for.
The last objection is the chant. No tribe ever used this chant. Like the chop, it was borrowed from Florida State in the 1990s when Deion Sanders came on board. Florida State students just made up the chant along with the chop.
Since none of these activities are tribal items, we are left with cultural appropriation. Defining that is like nailing a jellyfish to a wall. Or maybe we are just left defining cultural objections like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity, “I know it when I see it.”
One name change we could all support: the Atlanta Bananas. Do the banana chop.
John H. Maclean, Savannah
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: The Atlanta Braves' name and tomahawk are not that problematic
