Minor league affiliate’s t-shirt with an abbreviated name for Chattanooga, Tennessee, has generated controversy.
The Lookouts, the double A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds, intended to hand out t-shirts with the word “Nooga” on them with a clever visual twist: the “O’s” would be changed to a pair of eyeballs to represent the Lookouts. The team swiftly took the statement off their website after receiving concerns that it might be taken as a racist slur.
“Wow, I’m beyond speechless,” said an individual named Melanie Aycock, whose video complaining about the design was shared more than 200 times on social media. “I don’t want to offend anyone not just my community. I’m not sure I want to wear that I have young sons and that’s not the message I would want them to portray I would want them to be more positive and not blasting a message indirectly,” Aycock said.
“Oh no, chattanooga this isn’t gonna work,” one Twitter user named “Dre” wrote in response to the shirt. Other users said the shirt “cannot be real” and called it “hilariously bad.”
Many people made the decision to support the garment. In response to the widely circulated anti-shirt tweets, one of the top replies notes that “in order to perceive any issues with this shirt, one must actively search for offensive language and already have a tendency to use derogatory terms in their everyday speech.”
The Lookouts were established in 1885, and in 1909, fans decided on their moniker. They have always played under the same name, with the exception of one season in Alabama when they were known as the Montgomery Rebels.
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Since 1991, our team’s logo has not changed.
