I happened to be listening to a sports radio program yesterday afternoon which featured retired Seattle Supersonics forward Shawn Kemp as a “guest” to contribute his own unique take on the topics of the day. After contributing a few lame clichés, Kemp became animated when hosts “Bob and Groz,” brought-up the topic of free agent first baseman Prince Fielder, and the likelihood he could wind-up in Seattle. Kemp was all for it, his reasoning that the team has too many foreign players and needed more “Americans” that “Americans” can identify with. I have to admit that this statement hit me like a bucket of ice water. What was he was referring to, and who were the people he thought shared his view? Was he talking about Latinos like Felix Hernandez and Michael Pineda? Ichiro? There were 41 players who played at some point on the Mariner roster in 2011; seven were from Latin America (Jason Vargas is from California), one from Japan and one player from Canada. There were 32 “Americans” on the roster to “identify” with, if they were any good.
So what is Kemp talking about? I suspect that as a black man he is conscience of the fact that there hasn’t been a black American on the team who has been a local hero for at least a decade; and Kemp is certainly aware of complaints about the declining numbers of black American representation in baseball, a state of affairs that some players—like Torii Hunter—have scapegoated Latinos as the “cause” of. There are reasons for the declining interest in baseball by blacks, and none of them have anything to do with “foreign” players; but it is easier to blame someone else—and this is built into the new guidelines governing the recruitment of “foreign” players in the recently signed collective bargaining agreement. Are we allowed then to suspect that it is Kemp and the people he hangs out with that have this racial hang-up about Latinos? I once overheard this black Metro bus driver complain to one of his “brothers” that Latinos think that they are “on top” now because the most recent Census numbers indicate that there are more Latinos than blacks in the country. I mused to myself if he meant “on top” of the social dung heap.
There was no doubt Kemp’s statement had a racial, xenophobic element, and there was a noticeable silence before “Groz” finally offered that he was probably “right.” I’ll give “Groz” the benefit of the doubt; either he didn’t have time to process fully Kemp’s statement, or he didn’t want to embarrass Kemp by pointing out that some people might interpret his statement as racist. Or perhaps I shouldn’t even allow that; after Kemp left the set, there followed a brief discussion concerning Boomer Esiason’s “Chihuahua” comment concerning Mark Sanchez (who is Mexican-American), but then ensued the kind of debased commentary we’ve been hearing directed at Sanchez all year that commentators wouldn’t dare apply to another player for fear of being accused of some “ism.” It is interesting to note that Esiason is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity's Fox News show; most non-Fox News fans regard Hannity as a serial liar and bigot.
And since we are this subject, I might as well relate a discovery I made on the Internet. There was a video posted about a week ago on the Oshkosh (WI) Northwestern website. It featured a pale, blonde female named Brianne Lund, a student at UW-Green Bay and the current Miss Green Bay Area. She had something important on her mind that she just had to tell us, dripping with a tone of narcissistic vanity:
“This is me. I am who I am. I’m comfortable in my own skin, and I’m proud of my fair skin.”
She wasn’t auditioning for a face cream commercial, she was telling you matter-of-factly that was white, and she was wasn’t going to apologize for it. So why did she feel she had to defend her pale whiteness? Because she was, well, a racist and she didn't want to feel bad about it? I doubt that Lund actually posted this herself on the website; somebody probably discovered it somewhere and thought a person like her should be publicly exposed (there was another video of a Tea Party bus tour stop in Green Bay, apparently intended to make the participants look ridiculous). It reminded me of what I heard from this very pale, very blonde female student in a classroom at the southern university I attended. Right out of the blue and without any relation to what was being discussed in class, she blurted out that she wasn’t a racist, but she would never marry a black man. She just wouldn’t; but she wasn’t a racist. There room was silent. OK. And your point is??? I’m certain there are many people, particularly in the South, who feel the same way she did, but you don’t talk about it—it is just the way it is. But don’t tell us it has nothing to do with race; there is a very thin line between making decisions based on race, and racism, and she was trying to straddle that line to ease her conscience.
At any rate, Miss Green Bay Area’s hometown was Berlin, which like many small towns in Wisconsin was founded by German and Scandinavian immigrants; I spent my high school years in a town like this, which was as about as lily-white as they come, although in recent years there has been some slight demographic changes due mainly to Latino immigration. Berlin is 90 percent white, and like Lund of mostly of German extraction. Three-quarters of its non-white population is Latino. Having had to listen to the things I have just described, I can’t say I’m surprised by the racial attitude expressed by Ms. Lund.
No comments:
Post a Comment