Brooklyn Dodgers from left, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson and Preacher Roe in 1952. (Photo: AP file photo)
“(Opposing players) were abusing Reese very viciously because he was playing on the team with me … They were calling him some very vile names and every one bounced off Pee Wee and hit me like a machine-gun bullet. Pee Wee kind of sensed the sort of hopeless, dead feeling in me and came over and stood beside me for a while. He didn’t say a word but he looked over at the chaps who were yelling at me and just stared. He was standing by me, I can tell you that. Slowly the jibes died down … and then there was nothing but quiet from them. It was wonderful the way this little guy did it. I will never forget it.” – Jackie Robinson
Our cultural history is graced with goosebumps-inducing stories of white athletes supporting their black teammates in the face of racial cruelty. Some white players refused en masse to stay in segregated hotels or patronize “whites only” restaurants that refused service to their black colleagues. Some, like Pee Wee Reese, showed quiet but powerful support, sometimes just by standing next to their teammate and eloquently staring down and shaming those who tried to demean them.
Sadly, last week we saw white players on the Boston Red Sox take a different approach: They all decided to go to the White House to stand and laugh and celebrate with the man whose racial insults, stoking of divisions, and immoral neglect of the American citizens of Puerto Rico are so offensive to their black and Hispanic teammates that they could not bring themselves to participate. It is disgraceful that, when faced with the choice, not one of these white players had the courage or decency to skip that spectacle, if only to show solidarity with their teammates who felt unwelcome at the White House.
But while this divide we witnessed was higher profile than most, it is not uncommon in the new world into which we’ve descended. Many minorities in today’s America feel similar feelings of isolation and abandonment at the hands of our white friends and colleagues who’ve decided to cast their lot with a racial demagogue, regardless of what we think or say or how passionately we’ve begged them not to.
I’m a Democrat with many Republican friends and colleagues. I’ve always taken great joy and pleasure in our friendships as, I assume, have they. We’ve often had vigorous, even heated, but good-natured political debates that frequently find us reaching common ground because, in the end, we always wanted what was best for the country and each other.
Or, so I thought.
Lately, some of my friends have shocked me into a sense of betrayal. I now avoid political discussions with them, not because we might disagree, but because I fear they’ll once again remind me that they don’t truly share the principles they’ve always espoused. And knowing that they’ll again show me that they believe and are consciously and willingly doing things to actively undermine these principles fills me with dread, frustration, and sadness.
I stay away from these discussions because I am too tempted to risk rupturing our increasingly fragile friendships by speaking the painful truth to them: “How can you look at me, a black woman, your friend, and tell me that, knowing that this man insults, demeans and rejects me and people like me at every opportunity, demonizes immigrants, encourages, embraces and is revered by racists and Nazis, treats women like objects, lies so consistently that we can’t keep up, spouts off like a bullying, ignorant child (in language and tone that should embarrass and disgust any decent person), is trampling the Constitution in our faces, is giving lifetime appointments to racist judges committed to undoing every principle you claim to stand for, and after seeing everything that he has shown us in the last two years, you not only don’t regret putting him in office, you still support him?”
You may not realize it, but what you’re really showing me is that some things – be it your financial interests or something else – are more important to you than my well-being, the safety and security of my community, and the principles you supposedly hold dear. You’re tacitly admitting that your expressed commitment to equality, justice and decency has limits and can be balanced out against and outweighed by other interests that you deem more important to the point that you will tolerate and give power to a belligerent, bigoted tyrant in order to attain them.
While I don’t have much in common with 20-something-year-old Major League Baseball players of color, I do share their pain. And not just me; millions of us feel the anguish that comes with watching our friends refuse to support us and unabashedly align with the very persons who are doing us harm.
On the other hand, while I wasn’t around to witness Pee Wee Reese’s quietly eloquent gesture of grace, decency, and camaraderie, I understand what it must have meant to Jackie Robinson to have his teammate step out of his comfort zone and stand by him. I wish more of my contemporaries had the courage to do the same.
The players who taunted Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese 72 years ago, and the men who offered no support to them are long gone and, for the most part, lost to history. And I suspect that when we look back on these trembling times, we will find the people who should and do know better – our friends who turned their backs on us in exchange for a trip to the White House or a tax cut – will be similarly and deservedly relegated to the wrong side of history.
But we will remember and honor those who, like Pee Wee Reese, stand with their friends so that we can face down intolerance and speak up for what’s right and good, together.
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” – Dr. Martin Luther King
Originally Published in the Cincinnati Enquirer