Heroes, Hip-Hop, and His-story

‘Take me out to the ballgame’

They were look­ing at pic­tures of Lil Wayne the rap­per and I said, “That sure looks like a weave to me”. Right away, they answered, “ No! that’s his real hair.” A few min­utes passed and I jumped in again with – “He’s got some nice teeth though”. “Actu­ally — those are dia­mond grills in his mouth.” Finally I said, “Well he won’t last long in the busi­ness; next year you’ll be talk­ing about another Lil Wayne, Lit­tle Kim, or Lit­tle Bow Wow”. To which my daugh­ter answered, “Daddy, he’s already been in the busi­ness for 15 years; he’s a good rap­per”. That’s when I said to myself – shut up man, you don’t belong inthis con­ver­sa­tion. They were teenagers and they were hav­ing the time of their life. Still, I wanted to be a part of it. I’d dri­ven over 700 miles to get them to their promise land — the land of sub­ways, sky­scrap­ers, and bridges; of Brooklyn,Queens, Harlem, and hip-hop. For one fun filled week, they took a seri­ous bite out of the Big Apple. But the sweet­est bite of all was vis­it­ing the stu­dio of the hit BET show,‘106 & Park’ in Man­hat­tan. Each of the girls got to meet their favorite hip-hop host but more impor­tantly– each got on cam­era. You can just about imag­ine the mood they were in as we drove home. I wasn’t into hip-hop or any­thing, but I must admit, I was caught up in the excite­ment. Even though the show taped that Mon­day, it would not air until 6pm the fol­low­ing day; there was no way they were going to miss it. All that was stand­ing between us and their national tele­vi­sion debut were 14 hours and a 700 mile drive back to South Car­olina. With­out say­ing a word, we each knew what we had to do. They had to call up every­one they knew and tell them they were com­ing on T.V. (which they did) and I had to get them home as quickly as I could. So I decided to take an old short­cut – the Inter­boro Park­way. I hadn’t dri­ven the route in ten years, but I knew it would save us much needed time. What I didn’t know was some­time over this period they’d changed the name of the route to the Jackie Robin­son Park­way. Awe­some! I was over­joyed with the news. Now I don’t know what pos­sessed me to share this joy with the girls, but I did. Right in the mid­dle of their Lil. Wayne Mutual Admi­ra­tion Soci­ety, I shouted, “hey girls, we’re about to get on the Jackie Robin­son Park­way! Sud­denly, there was silence. Each of them slowly lifted their eyes to the mas­sive green sign with the white let­ters – JACKIE ROBINSON PARKWAY. Finally, one of them spoke, “Who’s Jackie Robinson?”I was just about to answer her when my daugh­ter blurted out, “Didn’t he play base­ball or some­thing daddy?” Here’s my chance to edu­cate them about a real hero. I thought. But before I could col­lect my thoughts, I glanced into the rear view mir­ror. There they were, con­sumed again with that stu­pid mag­a­zine. Silly me, I should have rec­og­nized a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion when I heard it; I should have known these girls were not the least inter­ested in Jackie Robin­son. But who was Jackie Robin­son any­way? To me, he was at least as impor­tant as Lil Wayne — but who said so? Why should they care about him? He became impor­tant to me only because my dad said so in 1968. We were attend­ing a youth ban­quet in Brook­lyn with the mayor of NewYork City and Jackie Robin­son on the pro­gram. When it was over, both the mayor and Mr. Robin­son stepped off the dais. That’s when my dad whis­pered in my ear, “there’s Jackie Robin­son over there — go shake his hand”. I didn’t know who Mr. Robin­son was but I knew he was some­one spe­cial — not every­one could make my dad glow like that. Even so, I still couldn’t bring myself to telling my daugh­ter and friends about him; about all the doors he opened for us. It wasn’t that I didn’t know his story, I just didn’t know how they would receive it. It’s hard try­ing to describe the tenor of the times sixty years ago to teenagers today – just as hard as describ­ing a rain­bow to a blind man.Sixty years ago, black chil­dren were not enti­tled to attend the same school as whites. Lynch mobs rou­tinely lynched blacks while local law enforce­ment con­ve­niently looked the other way. Blacks were excluded not only from cer­tain schools but also from parks, beaches, play­grounds, depart­ment stores, night clubs, swim­ming pools, the­aters, restrooms, hotels, bar­ber shops, rail­road cars, bus seats, libraries, hos­pi­tals, mil­i­tary units, and even vot­ing booths. Back then, if a white man became acquainted with a black man, odds were good that the acquain­tance stemmed from some ser­vice the black man was per­form­ing for him like shin­ning his shoes, mow­ing his lawn, or mix­ing his cock­tails. This was the world that Jackie Robin­son entered – a world where seg­re­ga­tion was the legal and bru­tally enforced law of the land. As my star-struck pas­sen­gers pas­sion­ately turned the mag­a­zine pages, drool­ing over their hip-hop icons, how could I tell them of a time when we never saw our­selves in  glamor mag­a­zines,  beauty pageants, or  T.V. ; a time when cow­boys wore white hats and white faces and the bad guys dressed in black; when the only roles for women on tele­vi­sion were cook­ing din­ner, car­ing for chil­dren, or com­fort­ing men after they came home from a hard days work of sav­ing the world. How could I explain to a car filled with future moth­ers the pain of a Chicago mother who in 1955 sent her 14yr old son to spend the sum­mer with his grand­mother in Mis­sis­sippi only to learn that he had got­ten his face bru­tally bashed in by a bunch of racist white men who dragged him out of his bed at gun point in the mid­dle of the night, took him into the woods, beat him, burned him, and left his dead body to rot in the local swamp all because ear­lier that day he inno­cently winked at a white woman. How can I cap­ture the con­scious­ness of this same mother when she was advised by the under­tak­ers that her son’s face was so badly muti­lated that his cas­ket should remain closed yet she insisted they open it so all the world could see what they had done to her son –Emmett Till.

How do I depict the painful pro­fun­dity of this period of our his­tory to them I asked myself? Given the cur­rent state of their inno­cence, I ques­tioned if I should. No, there was no way I could tell them about Jackie Robin­son with­out telling them what he over­came. It’s true that peo­ple who don’t know their his­tory are doomed to repeat it – but this was not the place nor the time. Per­haps it was the long drive ahead  of me but I got to think­ing about it — yes, his­tory does have a way of repeat­ing itself but so what. Rep­e­ti­tion is not the enemy here – igno­rance is. I believe that many of us are more than capa­ble of learn­ing from oth­ers  — if we have a strong anal­ogy . And wouldn’t you know it, life has a way of giv­ing us strong analo­gies. No, the girls didn’t know much about Jackie Robin­son but they did know a lit­tle about another hero – and I’ll be damned if he’s not the per­fect analogy. All of a sud­den, my thoughts were cen­tered on  the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Barack Obama’s bid for the pres­i­dency and Jackie Robinson’s quest to break into baseball.

First, and fore­most, I thought about the tax that Obama has to pay – the ubiq­ui­tous black tax of racism (yes, I said it); I thought about the way Obama has to calm the fear lurk­ing in the minds of many Amer­i­cans — the fear of the unknown; I thought about the sim­i­lar­ity between Amer­ica and the old tele­vi­sion show, ‘Let’s Make a Deal’. It’s the game show where con­tes­tants can keep what they’ve earned (how­ever measly) or trade it in for what’s behind door #1, #2, or #3 near the end of the show. Although this trade-in is their oppor­tu­nity to really win big, many con­tes­tants set­tle rather than deal. They are reluc­tant to take a chance on the unknown. Over the past 200 years, Amer­ica has become so com­fort­able with her white men only club that she’s afraid of some­one new. Oddly enough, she seems to pre­fer known hell over unknown heav­ens. Like­wise, in 1945, many base­ball own­ers and sports writ­ers rejected the idea of inte­grat­ing base­ball. They claimed that it would destroy the major leagues. One writer wrote, “I tell you that any­thing the Negro touches he ruins and base­ball is no excep­tion. His pres­ence will cre­ate dis­sen­sion that will impair its effi­ciency and thor­oughly break down morale”. Today, if you lis­ten to right wing con­ser­v­a­tive tele­vi­sion and talk radio, you will hear the same fears. Con­ser­v­a­tives believe if Obama gets elected, our nation’s taxes will triple, sales will sink, schools will suf­fer, econ­omy will crash, coun­try crum­ble, com­mu­ni­ties col­lapse, and our “national reli­gion” will be crucified.

Sec­ondly, every time I hear one of the so-called polit­i­cal pun­dits pos­tu­late that Obama is not qual­i­fied to be pres­i­dent, that he doesn’t have enough expe­ri­ence, I think of Jackie Robin­son. When they refuse to accept Obama’s expe­ri­ence as a state or U.S. Sen­a­tor, or belit­tle his tenure as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer when he could have opted for a six fig­ure coop­er­ate job like most of his Har­vard peers, I say to myself – here we go again. In 1947, the experts claimed that Robin­son wasn’t ready for prime time. At the time, Robin­son was the only man, black or white, to let­ter in four col­lege sports and he was one of the top play­ers in the old Negro Leagues. Still, the base­ball pun­dits insisted that he wasn’t qual­i­fied to play in the majors. Some took their analy­sis a step fur­ther – they claimed that none of the play­ers in the Negro Leagues was qual­i­fied to play in their pre­cious majors; that the “Negro Leagues were phys­i­cally and men­tally infe­rior to baseball’s major leagues”. But Robin­son proved them wrong. Despite the unre­lent­ing racial insults, the base­balls thrown at his head, the vol­umes of hate mail and death threats; despite being spit upon and spiked by oppos­ing play­ers, shunned by his own team­mates, banned from hotels and restau­rants, Robin­son showed the world that Blacks were not held back by their phys­i­cal or men­tal infe­ri­or­ity but by a sys­temic insti­tu­tion of discrimination.

In addi­tion, now that Obama is the Demo­c­ra­tic Party’s can­di­date for the pres­i­dent, his­tory is once again giv­ing us a fresh dose of déjà-vu. Those who sup­ported the can­di­dates that Obama legit­i­mately beat in the pri­maries are now pub­licly pro­claim­ing that they are not going to vote in the gen­eral elec­tion. This type of a sore –loser men­tal­ity is dan­ger­ously anal­o­gous to the reac­tion that Jackie Robin­son received when he broke into base­ball. Sev­eral play­ers on sev­eral teams, includ­ing his own, signed a peti­tion threat­en­ing to go on strike rather than play base­ball with “a nigger”.

Fur­ther­more, in order to make his great exper­i­ment (inte­grat­ing base­ball) work, Branch Rickey, the team owner, asked Robin­son in 1945 if he would be will­ing to gov­ern his tongue and rein in his tem­per when con­fronted with racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion. Rickey knew that Robin­son would not make it in the majors unless he was strong enough to with­stand the onslaught of immi­nent abuse head­ing for him. Strangely , despite her long his­tory of racial bias, Amer­ica has never been able to tol­er­ate an angry black man. With that in mind, like John the Bap­tist, Rickey, in 1945, began to care­fully pre­pare the way for Robinson’s entrance in base­ball. Every­thing Robin­son did, from the way he wore his uni­form to what he ate for break­fast, was closely scru­ti­nize by Rickey’s P.R. machine. Every facet of his per­sona was neatly pack­aged to make him more palat­able to main­stream Amer­ica. Rickey’s pro­mo­tion of Robin­son was an orches­trated effort to con­vince white Amer­ica that, despite his dark pig­men­ta­tion, Jackie Robin­son was some­one who shared their val­ues. Iron­i­cally, when we fast for­ward to 2008, it’s this same test of val­ues that has some­how become omnipo­tent with main­stream Amer­ica. No mat­ter how benign or col­or­less Obama tries to become, like weeds on a lawn, these who-values-do-you-share” tests keep pop­ping up. Never in his­tory has there been a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date whose had to jus­tify his name — his father, his pas­tor, his wife, his reli­gion, his beliefs, his friends, and even his love for his coun­try as much as Obama has had to.

Finally, just as it is unrea­son­able to think that Robin­son could have achieved all the great things he did with­out the bedrock sup­port of his lovely wife, Rachael, it’s insane to believe that Obama can accom­plish any­thing worth­while with­out his beau­ti­ful wife, Michelle. In 1945, Jackie and Rachael Robin­son were not received warmly ( to put it mildly ) by the Dodger fam­ily. How­ever, just a few years later, in a national magazine,this is what some of the play­ers’ wives had to say about Rachael Robin­son – “she pos­sessed aston­ish­ing good looks and unflap­pable poise”. They went on to describe her as “smart, well dressed and well spo­ken; as a fear­less woman who could accom­plish any­thing she set her mind to; as a woman who did not assert her­self in too for­ward a man­ner as to inter­fere with her husband’s des­tiny”. Again, if we cut and paste this descrip­tion of Rachael Robin­son 50 years ago, we have a per­fect descrip­tion to Michelle Obama today. Both of these ladies are artic­u­late, dynamic, and suc­cess­ful in their own right. More­over, both have ele­vated their life part­ners with their high expec­ta­tions, fam­ily first val­ues, and their uncom­pro­mis­ingly strong afro-centric fea­tures (yes, I went there).

In sum­mary, Barack Obama has many things in com­mon with the late great Jackie Robin­son. Robin­son never took for granted his role as a cham­pion for jus­tice. He never let us down. Mar­tin Luther King once described Robin­son, his pre­de­ces­sor in the civil rights move­ment, as “a sit inner before there were Sit-ins and a free­dom rider before there were Free­dom Rides”. He called him one of his heroes. In his cel­e­brated ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, Dr. King talked about liv­ing in a coun­try where peo­ple are mea­sured not by the color of their skin, but by the con­tents of their char­ac­ter. Amer­ica wasn’t ready for Robin­son and she not quite ready for Obama . But “noth­ing is more pow­er­ful than an idea whose time has come” wrote Vic­tor Hugo, the great writer. Ready or not, Obama has a date with des­tiny. While Amer­ica con­tin­ues to sub­lim­i­nally focus on the color of his skin, the con­tents of his char­ac­ter con­tin­ues to rise above her rain. Obama will find a way to cham­pion our nation’s cause just like Jackie Robin­son So let us tell our sons and daugh­ters “His-Story”. But we must not force feed them this his­tory – or they will choke”. Let’s spoon feed them until they are old enough to feed them­selves. Here’s my pre­scrip­tion for what “ills” them – over the next 5 or10 or 20 years give your sons and daugh­ters a tea­spoon of his­tory as often as needed. And in the remote chance that one of them ask you what my daugh­ter asked me – “didn’t he play base­ball or some­thing daddy?” Your short answer is “yes, some­thing”; your full answer is to tell them to down­load this arti­cle and read it. Oh, don’t for­get to tell them the arti­cle is about their pre­cious Lil Wayne.

Steve Williams, 2008