It’s no game with Indians logo

There’s a scene in the television show Master of None in which two characters, seeking to stir up a social media campaign against an executive who sent a racially insensitive email, meet an activist in his office.

He has a whiteboard next to his desk. One of the visitors notes that “Washington Redskins” is still at the top of the to-do list.

“That’s been on the docket since like ’94,” he laments.

“Seems like it should have been one phone call, right?,” comes the response. “’That’s a racial slur, you mind changing that?’; ‘No, not at all.’ ”

And yet, here we are. That the nickname Redskins is still in use and widely defended shows how difficult it can be to accomplish much in an industry where fans have deep emotional attachments to their teams and rich owners don’t like to be told what to do. Courts, though, may ultimately force the change. The Redskins’ trademarks have been cancelled, for example, though the football team is fighting those decisions.

Which brings us to Ontario, where the province’s Human Rights Tribunal has agreed to hear a case against the Cleveland Indians and Chief Wahoo, the smiling racist caricature the team wears on its caps and sleeves. It is early days yet, but the tribunal could yet do what the team has not: Order it to stop using the logo and nickname, at least in Toronto.

The case began last October, when indigenous activist Douglas Cardinal filed a complaint to the provincial tribunal while Cleveland was playing the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series. There was a brief flurry of interest when he went to Superior Court in hopes of getting an injunction against the use of the name and logo, but the judge denied it, at least in part because it would have been hard to do in the middle of a playoff series.

But the complaint didn’t die there. Late last month, after hearing arguments from Cardinal’s lawyers, and those from Major League Baseball, the Cleveland Indians, and Rogers Communications, which owns the Blue Jays, the tribunal ordered the complaint should proceed to a full hearing. Tribunal vicechair Jo-Anne Pickel rejected the various jurisdictional arguments of MLB and the teams, which essentially said this wasn’t a matter for an Ontario tribunal.

In a broad sense, it does seem like provincial humanrights law would be an odd instrument to bring an end to Chief Wahoo, based as he is in Ohio, but the case itself looks rather simple.

Ontario’s Human Rights Code prohibits discrimination in areas like education, employment and the “provision of services.” In the most obvious cases, you can’t refuse to serve someone of a certain race or sexual orientation, but the Code also extends to the way that service is provided. If a waiter makes racially charged remarks to a diner, that’s no better than having refused to serve them in the first place, the Code says.

You can see where this is going. Cardinal’s argument is that a baseball game is the provision of a service. And in the provision of that service, the argument goes, a Cleveland-Toronto game at the Rogers Centre discriminates against Cardinal and others of indigenous heritage with its public displays of native stereotypes.

“The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal doesn’t regulate whether someone can walk down the street wearing a discriminatory logo,” says Rebecca Jones, a partner at Lenczner Slaght, which is working with Cardinal on his complaint. “But if you want to offer a service to the public in Ontario, you have brought yourself within the Tribunal’s jurisdiction. That means you have to offer that service in a non-discriminatory way so that everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity or ancestry, can enjoy that service equally.”

The tribunal, to be clear, has not decided on that question, but said the full hearing is required “to determine whether the holding of baseball games at the Rogers Centre falls within the social area of services under the Code.”

Rogers did not provide a comment to Postmedia on the tribunal’s decision when asked.

It’s a process that could take many months. The hearing hasn’t been scheduled yet, and there’s the complicating factor of a similar complaint before the federal Human Rights Commission that deals with the broadcasting of Cleveland-Toronto baseball games, because telecommunications is federally regulated. (The provincial complaint deals specifically with what takes place inside Rogers Centre.)

So far, the nub of the issue — whether baseball games involving the Cleveland Indians are provided in a discriminatory environment in Toronto — has not been argued. But, man, look at that logo. Given that humanrights law in this country has often leaned toward the complainant, sometimes controversially, it’s hard to imagine the tribunal considering that imagery and saying, ‘No, we’re good with that.’ ”

Chief Wahoo seems like the kind of thing that should have ended with a phone call some years ago. But, here we are. The Cleveland Indians logo is the subject of an Ontario Human Rights Code complaint.