Welcome to Cleveland, Home of the...

A lot of ideas came to my mind after seeing the artwork Welcome to Cleveland, Home of the… that was created by Oscar Arredondo. The piece starts with a picture of the Cleveland Indians baseball team mascot, Chief Wahoo. Following it are an additional 16 images, all of which are faces of different people. However, each face is showing a common stereotype that goes along with a race and/or culture with the name of the group written underneath the face. For example, the face with Latino written under it showed a face that had a sombrero, and a thick mustache. Both of these things are usually associated with Latinos. They are stereotypes that were created due to the fact that historically a few Latino may or may not have worn sombreros and/or had thick mustaches. There were also pictures of other races and/or cultures including: Japanese, French, Negros, Irish, Italians, Africans, Germans, Polish, Chinese, Spanish, white folks, Jews, skinheads, gangsters, and Catholics. Each of these faces also had their common stereotypes shown through their facial expressions, physical features, clothing, and accessories. Two completely different messages came to me after studying the images. The first one being that Chief Wahoo should be seen as a racist image because it depicts negative stereotypes that are often related to being Native American like being savages, illiterate, wild, untamable, etc. However, the picture of the white folks really stood out to me. All of the faces showed negative stereotypes. So in order to give negative things to the white fold, they made them out to be seen as a KKK member. IT made me think of what other stereotypes are associated with the Caucasian race. I think that a face of a powerful white businessman would be a common stereotype, but then that wouldn’t be showing anything that negative. I don’t know what that could mean exactly, maybe something dealing with the fact that white people have created their own “good” stereotypes, and have hidden their past like the KKK. I think I could also be overanalyzing it as well. I might see it that way since I am white, and I don’t see the stereotype of the white race all being KKK members. That made me then realize that maybe other races or groups don’t see the negative stereotypes that are given to them. I guess that after seeing it made me question what message was the artist trying to show the audience. Was it just the obvious idea of negative stereotypes? Or could it be something deeper?

I thought that this piece of artwork spoke a lot about the common stereotypes that different groups are assumed to have. It was a good way to bring to light the idea that the indidan mascot figure is showing negative stereotypes of the Native American ethnic group. If I had seen this piece of art before taking this class, I wouldn't have thought much of it. It would have been just a bunch of faces showing different ethnicities/groups. I wouldn't have taken offense to it, but would have thought that it was dumb. But now after taking this class, I can see how it relates to the large problem in America of racial/ethnic stereotypes. I liked how the artist could show such a message with pretty much no words.