The Disturbing Common Thread of Racism
Over the past couple of weeks, as protesters across the United States have taken to the streets to demand a long-overdue end to police violence against Black Americans, a number of Black Major League Baseball players have begun to recount their own experiences with police. Former Philadelphia Phillies All-Star first basemanRyan Howard told theAthleticabout how a police officer racially profiled him, pulling him over fornotbreaking any traffic laws. Former Minnesota Twins All-Star center fielder Torii Hunterwas nearly shot by police in his own home because the officers did not believe that he owned it.Police brandished a gun in the face of Cleveland outfielder Delino DeShields for no reason at all. There are many other such accounts.
But there were two things that struck me about these stories as I read them over the past days. The first was that this was not a new phenomenon. Back in April of 2014, former MLB star Doug Glanvillewrote in the Atlantic about how he had been detained by a police officer for shoveling snow outside his own home. Forty years before that,Mets star Cleon Jones was brutally beaten by police, who claimed it was because the outfielder’s turn signal was broken. Black MLB players have been talking about this issue for decades. We just haven’t been paying attention, really.
In 2017, Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell knelt during the National Anthem before a game. Like Colin Kaepernick, Maxwell did so to protest police brutality.Maxwell’s career has also suffered as a result; in addition to receiving death threats, he hasn’t played in the major leagues since 2018, and is currently exiled to the Mexican League.
The sad fact is that we as fans have felt a certain sense of entitlement - an entitlement which allows us to demand players “shut up and play,” and which justifies our refusal to listen when players attempt to bring injustice to our attention. That entitlement bleeds through to every level of society. How do we know this? Because, after learning that they had just attempted to kill a baseball star, the officers in every one of the cases I mentioned above - DeShields, Hunter, and Howard - didn’t apologize, butdiddemand an autograph.
Consider this for a moment. It was not their innocence which saved them, but rather their fame - and yet, despite this, police felt entitled to seize that fame, to demand an autograph when all they had done was threaten to end their lives. Police are a reflection of the society they purport to protect, and so police felt entitled to use force to coerce the labor Black players to their benefitbecause we as a society feel that entitlement. Seconds after threatening to shoot a person for no reason at all, demanding an autograph from that person whilst still carrying that weapon is itself an act of violence.
That’s the second striking point about these stories, as more and more players courageously add their own life experiences. We, as a society, continue to feel this sense of entitlement towards the labor of Black people.We ask Black players to tell us how to fix police brutality. We ask Black friends to do emotional labor for us. But when we make these demands, it is impossible to escape the reality that we are barely acting in good faith, if at all. We didn’t pay attention when Cleon Jones asked for our help, or when Doug Glanville did, and they are exemplars not outliers. Decades of apathy have not earned us the benefit of the doubt.
So as heartening as these protests are, it is nonetheless concerning how some of this issue has been framed by those of us in white society. We are paying attention now because we are being forced to do so. We should acknowledge that. We should not be praised for doing the bare minimum. It is time for us to end this sense of entitlement. Acknowledging that Black Lives Matter is a starting point and a bare minimum, and nothing more.