Showing Respect For Major League Baseball Is A Code For White Supremacy
With Jackie Robinson Day coming up, “America’s Pastime” continues to show its white supremacy.
It’s baseball season again everybody!! It’s that time where certain teams hope to achieve their hopes of winning a world series. Other teams just want to improve for the future, and some honestly don’t know what direction is in store for them.
It’s also the time where Jackie Robinson Day is coming up on April 15. Every season, baseball teams from across the league wear number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson, who broke the MLB color barrier on Apr. 15, 1947. However, baseball is also that season where white supremacy reigns king.
The Atlanta Braves are expecting the call-up of their top prospect Ronald Acuna later this season. Acuna, drew ire from the Braves this past spring training. According to MLB.com, the Braves want Acuna to wear “his hat straight and maintain a professional appearance while in uniform.” What the hell is that supposed to even mean?
Maintaining a professional appearance in uniform? Why weren’t Chipper Jones, Bobby Cox, and many other Braves called out for not maintaining professional appearance?
Acuna is a 20-year-old from Venezuela. He like many other foreign players in baseball have been told to “respect the game” or “do it the right way”. An exmaple is when Bud Norris, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals made comments about foreign players years ago.
Norris said to players who want to disrespect the game that “if you’re going to come into our country and make our American dollars, you need to respect a game that has been here for over a hundred years.” Once again “respect” is the key word in Norris’s assessment of what foreign players have to do when they come to America. His assessment also proves that white supremacy reigns king in baseball
As long as the players aren’t dirty, making crucial mistakes for their team then nothing’s wrong with a bat flip from Jose Bautista in the 2015 American League Division Series. The same criticism of respecting the game happened with Yasiel Puig in his rookie year in 2013.
Another example of flat-out white supremacy in baseball is when last season former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling told Adam Jones that he didn’t experience racism in Boston because “everybody is starving and hungry to sit in front of a camera and talk and be social justice warriors.” Schilling also called Jones “full of shit” and said that he was a liar.
Schilling, a white player, should not tell Jones, a black player, what he feels as a black man playing baseball, especially in the outfield. Once again, another example of how white supremacy reigns king in baseball.
And let’s not forget the constant battles over the logos of some of those baseball teams, including my own the Atlanta Braves. Earlier this season, the Cleveland Indians announced that starting next year the organization will abandon the “Chief Wahoo” logo it proudly proclaimed for years.
You can say whatever about the logo, but for some fans to taunt Native American protesters for wanting the logo removed from the team shows that white supremacy reigns king in baseball.
The “Racism Is As American As Baseball” banner makes all sense now. Even though it’s been 71 years since Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, there is still struggle when it comes to how people of color are treated in this league.
Kingsley Iyawe is a senior, mathematics major from Atlanta, GA. He is currently the editor for The Maroon Tiger.
