Cards' Helsley, a member of Cherokee Nation, calls 'chop' chant 'disappointing, disrespectful'

[SaintLouisBlues]

https://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/birdland/cards-helsley-a-member-of-cherokee-nation-calls-chop-chant/article_4150156e-89ae-5e55-8e0d-7936eeef8ded.html#tncms-source=infinity-scroll-summary-siderail-latest

ATLANTA — The contrast was striking Thursday as Cardinals reliever Ryan Helsley, pride of Tahlequah, Okla., and member of the Cherokee Nation, took the mound at a pivotal moment in the eighth inning and a stadium full of Braves fans swung foam tomahawks distributed by the team and chanted as they have for nearly three decades in Atlanta. The cheer, called the "Tomahawk Chop," was not directed toward Helsley, per se.Still, he felt something personal.

“I think it’s a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general,” Helsley said Friday afternoon at SunTrust Park. “Just depicts them in this kind of caveman-type people way who aren’t intellectual. They are a lot more than that. It’s not me being offended by the whole mascot thing. It’s not. It’s about the misconception of us, the Native Americans, and it devalues us and how we’re perceived in that way, or used as mascots. The Redskins and stuff like that.

“That’s the disappointing part,” he continued in a conversation with The Post-Dispatch. “That stuff like this still goes on. It’s just disrespectful, I think.”

[Funtatlaguy]

1. Giving up ten runs in one inning sucks more.

[mercuryblues]

2. +1