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 heplay 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
‘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 heplay 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