42 - Jackie Robinson's Journey Against Racism in Major League Baseball

Last evening I saw “42”, the movie about Jackie Robinson’s entry as the first African-American into Major League Baseball. It is an excellent movie and I’d highly recommend seeing it. The movie depicts the struggles against racism, not only in Robinson’s acceptance by other players in MLB in 1947 but also the discrimination he had to live through in his day to day life at that time: segregated washrooms, seating on public transit, refusal of service on an airline plus the outright bigotry of people in their day to day dealings with him. What hatred; what anger; what despising! There’s a very telling scene in which there is a young boy with his father, sitting in the stands, out to enjoy the ball game, but the fans, including the father are shouting out racial insults at Robinson. The boy looks at the fans around him, not knowing what to do. Then it comes to pass that he starts shouting the same things so as to fit in. An apt metaphor for how racism is started and sustained in a society! The movie is well written; so listen carefully when you go. A couple of examples: The story is set just after the Second World War and Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers (whose farm team interestingly enough was in Montreal), who is leading Robinson’s hiring by the team and the acceptance of African-Americans in MLB, says words to the effect: we’ve just had a victory over fascism abroad, now it’s time to have one over racism at home. Rickey does say in the movie that he is bringing African-Americans onto the team for business reasons. I’m not totally convinced. I think he deserves a lot of credit for having the strength to lead this change in society. Then in another scene when the players are warming up on field before a game, and Robinson is being racially insulted by the fans, the shortstop, who during the movie has been slowly evolving out of his racist beliefs, comes over to stand by Robinson, show his support, even puts his arm around Robinson to show the fans his support visibly, but then he says to Robinson: tomorrow we’ll all wear 42 (Robinson’s number on the back of his uniform) so they can’t tell us apart. It is so hard for me to understand how society can become and remain racist. In the U.S. South there were lots of mean people who were consumed by it, but there were lots of good people too who just got caught up in it, swept along by it and embraced it; not realizing that it was wrong. Why didn’t they give their head a shake? How could they have ensured that they did not accept the norm of society and support such inappropriate behaviour? The norms of society are very powerful on the populace. In hindsight we see and realize how wrong it was. My concern is whether there are things today which are so ingrained in our societal norms that we don’t think about whether it is really right that we act that way – something that with the benefit of hindsight at some point in the future we will realize it is wrong and say: what were we thinking, how could we have acted in such an inhumane manner. Might it be how we as a society treat the poor, the uneducated, the homeless, the mentally ill, etc.? I sure hope we aren’t missing something because I wouldn’t want history to look back on us and think we were bigots for the way we are acting now.