By making the block “C” logo the primary logo, the Cleveland Indians have made an astute public relations move. This decision shouldn’t really surprise anyone since the Indians started to see how their fans felt about the “C” logo versus the old Chief Wahoo logo this past fall.

Indians changing primary logo to the block-C. No change to uniforms, Wahoo still on home cap, sleeves. pic.twitter.com/0EEopJ3ph2

— Paul Lukas (@UniWatch) January 8, 2014

The article at Hardball Talk makes the case for why this decision was necessary for the club to make:

“But this fall the Indians surveyed fans about Wahoo. And the heat being brought to bear on the Washington Redskins for their racist name and iconography is no doubt being noticed on Ontario Street up in Cleveland. And, even if they once again deny it today, it’s impossible to see this move as anything other than a further marginalization of Chief Wahoo. One that, in my view, will inevitably lead to his elimination at one point in the not-too-distant future, even if it’s done without a press release or official announcement.”

It would make sense that the eventual elimination of Chief Wahoo is the Indians logo is the end goal here. The Chief Wahoo logo is offensive and only helps to perpetuate the negative stereotypes of Native Americans.

As a result of the fact that Chief Wahoo helped to perpetuate the negative stereotypes, there has been a push to ditch the traditional logo in favor of a less controversial one. This push has slowly led to the club using the block “C” logo more and more throughout the last decade. In fact, Chief Wahoo is all but invisible during Spring Training as the stadium and uniforms use the block “C” logo.

My favorite part of this entire situation is that the Indians just dumped this into the news cycle around the Hall of Fame election. While this is an important move from a public relations standpoint, the club doesn’t want to bring a lot of attention to this announcement.

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