Modern civil rights acts of civil disobedience have run off the rails and become something beyond counterintuitive; it’s become far-reaching, obtuse and even ironic.
Take, for example, the May 21 press conference at the Great American Ball Park led by a group of respected ministers meant to steal some of the upcoming shine of the All-Star Game to bring greater attention to this country’s racial injustices, including the police-related deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., New York, Baltimore and Cleveland.
The greatest irony here is that, for one, despite that Chuck Harmon broke the Reds’ color barrier in 1954, it’s been an open secret and an open sore that the Cincinnati Reds don’t much care whether or not blacks come to baseball games. So trying to get “baseball” in its entirety — with black-skinned Cuban players picked like so much cotton — to listen to our racial woes and to give a damn about them is a battle fought in vain.
Baseball is not basketball, which is nearly all-black — on the courts, anyway. King LeBron James, who has nothing whatsoever to lose, can rally his team and players on other teams to wear “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts during pre-game warm-ups to honor the last words of Eric Garner before he died in broad daylight on a public sidewalk under the heft of New York police.
That act of civil disobedience brought attention, but did it bring change? Did it prove that #blacklivesmatter or simply that #richblackathletesmatter?
Another way this pinpointing Major League Baseball has gone awry is that the reverends Damon Lynch III and Bobby Hilton and their cohorts, in the midst of their press conference talking points, were out-shouted by a small throng of white supremacists who, in turn, stole their shine.
And as Lynch pointed out to reporters, this tactic isn’t anything new under the civil rights sun.
But isn’t it a postmodern version of “Who’s On First?” when white supremacists crash your press conference to decry the white man’s falling status and to shout about the ongoing criminal activities of black men?
Ah, boys in their hoods. Actually, the white hatemongerers weren’t in Klan regalia. This is the 21st century, after all. They were in regular street clothes, like regular people.
I am not sure which way I prefer my racists: under the cloaks of sheets or barefaced in the light of day.
Anyone in this city old enough to have an institutional memory will remember when Fountain Square was merely a lunchtime wasteland of zombie-eyed Fifth Third bankers wearing gray suits with identical lapel pins brown bagging it beside legal secretaries from Western Hills in career separates; until Christmas, when there’d be a Christmas tree, a menorah and the Klan and their cross — all in the name of American fairness and free speech.
So, the phantasmagorical nature of racism in Cincinnati is nothing new to those of us who have been watching those wheels go ’round.
It might be dangerous for me to say this, but for Lynch’s group to make any real headway with their mission as it relates to making baseball sit up and take notice, there almost needs to be a riot underway.
I am not calling for a riot, but I am saying that during peace time when things are “good” and the livin’ is easy, folks become deaf to cries of racial injustice, especially in a city that isn’t presently in the national spotlight for police misconduct.
We are calm for now except for the rash of street shootings mostly involving black men. Now, that’s an issue the ministers could get behind.
Why not come to Walnut Hills, Avondale or Over-the-Rhine and talk to some of these black boys and men who still think it’s OK to settle beefs by killing one another with innocent bystanders in the midst?
Now, that’s a battle worth fighting and one wherein the blame can be squarely fixed on a known entity, unlike “baseball” that has nothing to do with racial strife unless, of course, we were in the streets flipping cars, throwing bottles and rocks and burning down businesses.
Take Baltimore.
In Baltimore, Major League Baseball called the Orioles’ game early in the rioting once baseball’s administrators saw how close angry protestors had gotten to the stadium, because no good white person wants other good white people getting hurt over something some rogue cops did to a black man in the back of a police transport van.
Can you imagine the blood on the Orioles’ hands if innocent fans had gotten hurt making their way to or from the game?
Then, the game was played, but to an empty stadium, which must have cost the Orioles and baseball millions of dollars.
And if we don’t know anything else in Cincinnati, we know that messing with the money of majority culture is a sure way to get other people’s attention. Remember our own economic boycott after the April 2001 riots?
Well, that boycott worked. There were all manner of groups and entertainers who bypassed Cincinnati until we got our federally mandated act together.
The ministers’ potpourri of demands seem stretched to a weird capacity because they have also included the ongoing trial of former Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Tracie Hunter in with the injustices they want brought to bear by addressing Major League Baseball on the run up to the All-Star Game.
Good luck, folks.
I respect the attempt; something’s got to be done.
But is it this?
Not all tactics work, and in the name of civil disobedience, folks cannot only fight the battles they know they can win. Attention gained during the futile attempts is also important.
I do get that.
But it seems the ministers would at least like to get close to an ear of someone who will listen. Baseball is not listening to you and could care less about the treatment of black men in America.
Unless they’re black men who can run, throw, pitch and catch.
Contact KATHY Y. WILSON: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2015.