On the Second Man

This year Jackie Robinson Day - which began in 2004 as a (relatively) dignified tribute to an unquestionably significant man - has been turned into that most American of things: a chance to make some money.

This is unsurprising. In death, Corporate America (which has always been, and unfortunately continues to be, essentially a euphemism for White America) has turned Jackie Robinson into an ideal, for all intents and purposes stripping him of his humanity. We've done the same with Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed on April 4th a half century ago. We can do this because the accomplishments of those men in life were so significant that they stand out as miraculous, superhuman. We can also do this because neither Robinson nor King expressed their blackness in a way that present-day White America finds distasteful. Both Robinson and King were proud to be black, but, for better or for worse, they rarely if ever publicly displayed the type of confrontational attitude about their race that is more associated with men such as Malcom X in the political context and Dick Allen in baseball.

In 1963, Malcolm X gave a highly significant speech that is now referred to as "Racial Separation." In it, he outlines his response to the systemic racism that defines American life, envisioning a black nation independent of White America. Likewise, when Dick Allen was confronted by the reality that his own team, the Philadelphia Phillies, was fundamentally racist and viewed him as nothing more than a black ballplayer to be taken advantage of despite his gaudy stats, his response was a similar, albeit differently manifested, fuck you to White America. Compare Malcolm X's "Racial Separation" to another famous speech from 1963, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," in which King expresses his desire for an America defined by integration and equality. Compare Allen's attempts to get traded from the Phillies by continual and repeated transgressions of team policy to Robinson agreeing, through gritted teeth, to take a picture during the 1947 season with Phillies manager and notable racist Ben Chapman. In making these comparisons, we look back at Robinson and King and find that, while they may have been vilified by some in their own eras, the historical record demonstrates that neither man ever threw his blackness in White America's face. This is not meant as some sort of value judgment, it is simply to explain that neither man ever displayed the specific kind of unapologetic attitude towards his race that makes White America generally uncomfortable, and leads racist White America, in the 1940s, the 1960s, and today, to use the term "uppity" as an adjective.

Furthermore, their actions matched their public demeanour: King's policy of non-violence meant that, while the protests he led were portrayed by the White Media of the time as threatening, the only violence carried out during King-led demonstrations was committed by representatives of the State Apparatus. Similarly, Robinson never responded in public to the racism that he faced every time he stepped onto a baseball field. This is how we end up with NASCAR tweeting out an inane quotation on "#MLKDay" shortly after two high profile owners threaten to fire anyone who kneels during the pre-race national anthem. This is how we end up with the option to purchase from your favourite team's online shop, for three dollars extra, the official Jackie Robinson Day hat - or, your team's hat with a plastic patch glued onto the side. We aren't dealing with black men, we're dealing with American symbols.

As demonstrated by the absolutely irrational response from White America to things like the Black Lives Matter movement or the anthem protests (to use the shorthand for the series of athletes across sports who have chosen to kneel during the national anthem), white Americans do not like being confronted with the reality that their platitudes about respect for symbolic black men such as King and Robinson are in fact meaningless. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the third Monday in January and not April 4th for an official reason - in America we tend to commemorate the day significant figures were born rather than the day they died - and for a much more practical one. To celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4th would mean that White America would be unable to escape the reality that he was murdered because of the colour of his skin.

This is the same reason MLB celebrates Jackie Robinson so publicly, while essentially ignoring Larry Doby entirely. In the 71 years since he debuted for the Dodgers, Robinson's individuality has been whitewashed (a word used deliberately) from history. He has become a synecdoche - he is no longer an individual black man, he is all black men, a symbol that represents Larry Doby, Hank Thomson, Monte Irvin, Minnie Miñoso, and all the rest of Major League Baseball's integration-era black players. For MLB to celebrate Doby in a manner similar to the way Robinson is celebrated - perhaps by having all players from every American League team wear his number 14 on July 5th, the day he debuted for Cleveland - would be to acknowledge not only that Doby faced all of the same racial prejudices Robinson did but also that he dealt with them with exactly the same dignity and composure as Robinson. This would force baseball, and indeed White America generally, to acknowledge that Jackie Robinson's appearance in the Majors did not portend the demise of racism in America, something MLB seems to have convinced itself is true. More significantly, however, to honour Doby in this way would be to humanise Robinson - his self-control, astonishing though it may have been, was neither superhuman nor even unique to him after all - thereby delegitimising the myth baseball has built up around him. Baseball would have to acknowledge that Jackie Robinson was, first and foremost, a black man.

This second possibility is exactly what baseball, firmly rooted in Corporate America, fears most. Because history shows us that White America is fine with black men right up to the point that we have to do the very thing that men like Robinson and King and Doby (and Malcolm X and Dick Allen) have always asked of us: acknowledge them as men.