OK, here's my whopper KC thread: THE FOOTBALL TEAM. Their …

In order to dig into this properly, we have to know some things. Specifically about power players in KC in the mid-20th century.
Specifically, a very large and imposing mayor and Boy Scout leader named H. Roe Bartle.

His name is all over the city: the convention center is called Bartle Hall after him. There is a scout camp in Osceola named after him. He was a literally huge figure in KC in the 1950s.

so, as mayor he did some goodish stuff, notably desegregating local hospitals, etc. HOWEVER, he should be better known for his antics as a scout leader starting in the 1920s.

so in 1925 Bartle started a society of boy scouts at a camp he called "the Tribe of Mic-o-say"

it's important to note that Bartle has ZERO native heritage--his father was an English immigrant.
But that didn't stop him from creating a fake "Tribe" of young impressionable men.

The "tribe" still exists and subsists of predominately white men teaching their predominately white men a mishmash of falsehoods about Native American life and culture that emphasizes toxic masculinity and harmful sterotypes about Native Americans.

For instance, members of the tribe have deerskin loincloths that they wear to special gatherings. They adopt special names, etc. This is, as I've said and will continue to emphasize: MOSTLY WHITE MEN.

They have "war bonnets" and "medicine men" and "chiefs" and all one simply has to do is claim it. It's dressing up without historical grounding or considering actual native people.

So H. Roe Bartle was known around KC as "THE CHIEF" for this purpose. His titanic status in heart of america boy scouts plus his presence in the community and love of appropriating Native American imagery and cultural facets.

In the 1960s when the NFL was forming and Texas-based mogul with KC ties, Lamar Hunt, brought a team to KC, he felt it apt to name it after our own "CHIEF" H. Roe Bartle.

and the antics insued.
The name may be unsettling but the fans and franchise have entertained every itch of culturally damaging and embarrassing action and rhetoric.

so as a result things like a Horse that gallops through the stadium is named (yes) Warpaint.

and there's "the chop" which actually has a song that sounds vaguely native and is accompanied by drums and horns.
It involves the mass of fans moving their arms like, yes, "a tomahawk"

People paint their faces and make a mockery of native culture at EVERY GAME. You'll see any number of cultural appropriations at one of these functions.

all of this is just part of the local culture that initially drove out and colonized the territory in the 1800s, notably in places like the Shawnee Mission (Kansas) and other places.

so TL; DR - the KC football team is even more racist than you realized and has deep roots in the settler colonialist founding of its very city.

Listen, i want Tom Brady to lose as much as the next person. but I also want racism out of the sports.

@threadreaderapp Unroll

OK, here's my whopper KC thread: THE FOOTBALL TEAM.
Their name, their legacy, their fuckery.

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OK, here's my whopper KC thread: THE FOOTBALL TEAM.Their name, their legacy, their fuckery.

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OK, here's my whopper KC thread: THE FOOTBALL TEAM.
Their name, their legacy, their fuckery.