【Writer's Bullpen (2009)】

Once again,Writer's Bullpen (2009) the sports and real worlds have converged to show there are two Americas, one experienced by white people and the other experienced by minorities.

While the big-toothed, red-faced visage of a baseball team's logo takes center stage at the World Series in Cleveland, seven states away real Native American people are faced down by police who look outfitted for war, not a dialogue with unarmed protesters.

SEE ALSO: The dark side of a feel-good World Series

We've seen these two Americas reflected by sports many times before, of course -- perhaps most notably of late in the drastically different experiences of Brian Banks and Brock Turner, two former athletes accused of sexual assault.

---

You May Also Like

---

---

This time, however, it comes with an absurdly grotesque twist in the form of the grinning Chief Wahoo, the cartoon mascot of the Cleveland Indians.

Water cannons and rubber bullets

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Chief Wahoo is a cartoon caricature of a Native American man, long decried as racist. Meanwhile, last Thursday -- a day before the Indians beat the Chicago Cubs in World Series Game 3 while wearing Chief Wahoo hats -- Native American protesters in North Dakota were fired upon with rubber bullets and water cannons by armored law enforcement officers.

More than 100 people have been arrested as part of the ongoing protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, a planned project for a Texas-based company to transport oil from North Dakota to Illinois. The standoff is ongoing and tensions show no signs of easing. The online hashtag #NoDAPL has picked up steam as the conflict gains mainstream attention.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

One root of Native American protesters' concern is that the pipeline is planned to pass under the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux, a tribe whose reservation straddles the line between North Dakota and South Dakota. An earlier proposal instead had the pipeline passing under the Missouri River north of the city of Bismark, North Dakota, according to the Bismark Tribune. But that plan was changed for reasons including worries that the pipeline could contaminate the city's water supply.

Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Bismark, as it happens, is more than 92 percent white, according to census data.

Dogs and pepper spray have been unleashed upon the Dakota protesters, according to Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, who has been covering the protests longer than most.

There's something darkly farcical about seeing all this play out while the Indians compete in the World Series, America's pastime, with Chief Wahoo's grinning face adorning their sleeves and caps. Native American activists have criticized the use of Chief Wahoo for decades, and the team only recently made an ultimately hollow gesture of understanding.

Indians owner Paul Dolan, a white man, calls Chief Wahoo "part of our history and legacy." This is the argument frequently cited by Cleveland fans who dismiss criticism of the logo as politically correct hand-wringing. It's certainly true that sports teams and the marks they use represent all sorts of meaningful, emotional attachments and experiences in people's lives.

But you know what else is true?

Of histories and legacies

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Genocide, exploitation and callous dismissal at the hands of white people are all unfortunate parts, to borrow a phrase from Dolan, of the "history and legacy" of the Native American experience in recent centuries. Thus, the arrogance and entitlement of many white people to decide that they get to set the boundaries of what othergroups consider racist is a part of a long tradition.

This criticism isn't new, of course. It's just highlighted as starkly as ever with the Indians in the World Series at the same time the Dakota Access Pipeline protests add another chapter to the long story of conflict between capitalist American interests and the people who first inhabited this land.

But it seems that's just life in the two Americas.

There's one in which sports fans can lose themselves in boxscores, close games and dramatic narratives. Then there's the other, in which the humans used as mascots have to endure new iterations of the same treatment to which they've been subjected for hundreds of years.