Donald and Melania Trump took part in the contentious “tomahawk chop” cheer for the Atlanta Braves in Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday night against the Houston Astros.
While many fans enthusiastically join in the cheer that is meant to evoke chopping with a “tomahawk,” Native Americans generally regard it as racist and demeaning.
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Several spectators can be seen in the video of Donald Trump and the first lady doing “the chop,” and a slew of Braves fans on Twitter erupted in laughter.
Trump doing the chop pic.twitter.com/EWYJujgvtM
— Sam Ann 🐈 (@samannraven) October 31, 2021
In the early 1830s, the Muscogee (Creek) tribe was removed from land it owned in Georgia by the U.S. government. In 1838, the Cherokee tribe was forced by the government on a 1,200-mile march from Georgia. Thousands of people died. It’s called the Trail of Tears with good reason.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 29, 2021
This is not about being woke. It’s about acknowledging that an atrocity happened here, about owning a dark part of our past, and saying maybe, just maybe, not engaging in something that’s wildly ahistorical because it feels good, and for no other reason, is the right thing to do.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 29, 2021
Last week I spoke as a Native about the tomahawk chop & took 6 days worth of abuse from Atlanta fans but this is important.
This is racist as fuck. Atlanta can buy a pet tribe in the Eastern Band of Cherokee but until this ends and they #changethename they are too. #TheTimeIsNow pic.twitter.com/D8MKPiA4xn
— Frances Danger (@FrancesMFDanger) October 24, 2021
The tomahawk chop is inexcusable and has been for thirty years, the entirety of its existence. Native people have been telling us that for thirty years. It’s a shameful pantomime, meant to caricature under one racist umbrella millions of people and hundreds of peoples.
— Jesse Thorn, Not Spooky 🤷♂️ (@JesseThorn) October 30, 2021
St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ryan Helsley, a Cherokee Nation member, complained after a game against the Braves in 2019 that the team’s tomahawk chop cheer portrays Native Americans as “caveman-type people.”
“They are a lot more than that,” Helsley told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Appropriating Native American names for something unconnected to their culture “devalues us and how we’re perceived in that way, or used as mascots,” he said.
Last week, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred insisted that regional Native Americans support the chop, which several Native American representatives quickly refuted.
The National Congress of American Indians issued a statement on Wednesday urging Fox not to broadcast the chop during this weekend’s World Series games.
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The Atlanta Braves told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution late last year that they were sticking by their controversial name, despite the fact that a number of teams have dropped Native American terms and slurs from their names because they are now considered racist.
However, Braves officials stated at the time that they were still debating the contentious chop chant, which fans repeat at the start of games and as a rallying cry.
Donald Trump attended Game 5 of the World Series for the first time since October 2019 at Washington’s Nationals Park. When he was shown on the stadium’s video board that evening.