The Atlanta Braves won the World Series, and the lifelong Braves fans at Paste couldn't be more excited. It's also the perfect time for them to change their name, before they're inevitably forced to.
The Atlanta Braves just won the World Series for only the second time in their history. It’s a huge victory not just for the team, but for all of Atlanta and Georgia, which has been starved of sporting success for decades. It’s also the perfect time for the Braves to finally address the problem of their racially insensitive name, and change it to something that doesn’t demean Native Americans.
If you grew up as an Atlanta sports fan, like me, you know how miserable it can be. Atlanta’s pro sports teams have felt cursed for decades. The Falcons and Hawks have never won a championship in over 50 seasons each, and despite an unprecedented run of making the playoffs throughout the ‘90s and the ‘00s, the Braves only just won their second. The Falcons own the most embarrassing Super Bowl defeat in memory, when they blew a 28-3 lead and lost in overtime.
Of course there’s another kind of pain that the Atlanta Braves have caused over the decades, one felt by Native Americans who feel mocked and ridiculed by the team’s name and its fans’ “Tomahawk Chop” chant. The name “Braves” might not be as blatantly racist as the prior names of Washington’s football team or Cleveland’s baseball team, but it’s still a reference to archaic racial stereotypes that turn real live people into cartoons.
Many Braves fans will be upset by a name change. Many people who have never cared about the Braves and can’t name a single one of their ‘90s starting pitchers will respond with trumped up buffoonish outrage about a mythical “cancel culture,” angling to score political points off of something they don’t actually care about and have no reason to weigh in on.
Those who defend the Atlanta Braves name, including both the team and MLB, point to the organization’s
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