Carron J. Phillips should win a Pulitzer Prize for his thoughtful Deadspin piece labeling a nine-year-old white boy a genocidal, African/Native American-hating racist for inexplicably wearing blackface to a football game.
Phillips, himself an oppressed minority because he is black and exists, chided the NFL for failing to condemn Holden Armenta, who recently sported red and black face paint and a feathered Native American headdress during a recent Kansas City Chiefs game. (READ MORE from Matt Manochio: The New York Times Apologizes … Sort Of)
“While it isn’t the league’s responsibility to stop racism and hate from being taught in the home, they are a league that has relentlessly participated in prejudice,” Phillips wrote in his Nov. 27 piece. Indeed. When one thinks of prejudiced organizations, what immediately comes to mind are the KKK, Islamic Jihad, and the National Football League.
Deadspin must continue to call out non-existent racism wherever it exists, especially within the sports world.
The Charlottesville crowd rushed to Armenta’s defense by absurdly suggesting the boy dressed up to support his favorite team. Nonsense. Anyone looking at a grade-school-aged boy wearing Native American garb, associated face paint, and a football jersey to a game where one of the teams is named after a tribal elder would never think the child a sports fan, but, rather, a fledgling David Duke yearning to indoctrinate fans in his section of the stands into following him down the twisted path of white supremacy.
Armenta, who claims Chumash Tribal ancestry (although I’ve not seen any paperwork on this) can never not be considered a racist because deep down he is white. And as the African American Phillips himself has tweeted: the more white people there are, the more “concerning” it is.
But what could have prevented Armenta’s foray into race hatred?
Writes Phillips: “This is what happens when you ban books, stand against Critical Race Theory, and try to erase centuries of hate. You give future generations the ammunition they need to evolve and recreate racism better than before.”
Had Armenta only picked up a copy of Gender Queer in his elementary school library, he would’ve avoided his mad descent into bigotry. Sadly, it’s unlikely the Armenta bookshelf displays anything by Ibram X Kendi but, rather, inappropriate white colonialist literature like Johnny Tremain or the Bible.
The NFL has allowed mascot bigotry to fester for far too long, and the Chiefs are the least of the league’s worries. The following teams, to use Phillips’s phrase, also are racially concerning:
Who are the Patriots? A team whose name conjures up the country’s white, racist Founding Fathers who established the United States in 1619 solely to promote slavery — just ask New York Times Magazine’s domestic correspondent Nikole Hannah-Jones. The team’s mascot, Pat Patriot, of course is white. Don’t expect this to change any time soon due to the team’s owner, Robert Kraft, a staunch supporter of Israel, and, therefore, apartheid. In some ways, 2023 New England mirrors Selma, Alabama, circa 1965.
New England Patriot mascot Pat Patriot (Parker Harrington/Youtube.com)
Cleveland’s football team blatantly mocks minorities using its name alone: Browns. As in brown skin. This is racial exploitation at its worst. Despite all factual evidence pointing toward the team being named after its co-founder, Paul Brown, Cleveland nonetheless should hang its head in shame for creating the abominably bigoted mascot, Brownie the Elf. Wikipedia lists “Brownie” as a racial slur against Hispanics, so it must be true. Elves are similar to Dwarfs — at least if you play Dungeons & Dragons — in that they are small, inhuman creatures. Using that logic, Phillips and I would say this is an afront to Peter Dinklage and little people everywhere. It doesn’t matter that it’s not Brownie the Dwarf. Elf is close enough to being insensitive toward the vertically challenged among us. If you are a Mexican dwarf living in Cleveland, you must feel one foot tall when you see Brownie the Elf scampering across the gridiron. (READ MORE: An Open Letter From a Contrite Harvard Professor)
Cleveland Browns mascot Brownie the Elf (WKYC Channel 3/Youtube.com)
Rowdy, the Cowboys’ mascot, tries harkening back to old Western Americana but fails in every respect. Let’s start with white Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, who, in 1957 when he was 14, led a group of Neo Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, and Freemasons to block the desegregation of an Arkansas high school. Is it any wonder this man would go on to own a team whose mascot represents legions of gun-loving white men who partook in Native American genocide, and, naturally, were part of the Confederacy?
Carron Phillips has taught humanity a valuable lesson that I have heeded: Anything can be racist, and to deny this is itself racist. Many are now calling for Phillips and Deadspin to be sued by a Native American-hating Native American child who had the temerity to publicly dress as a Native American. This cannot happen as it would destroy objective journalism as we know it in 2023. Deadspin must continue to call out non-existent racism wherever it exists, especially within the sports world.
Don’t get me started on the Miami Dolphins.
Matt Manochio writes at MattManochio.substack.com
