In the United States, the
race card plays as a trump. It beats other hands and plays. It shifts the
dynamic and often the rules of a game. Today people mutter that minorities play
the race card for gain or protection. But the history the race card is deeper
and uglier. The race trump has a long history of lots of bad and a little good.
The South played it at the Constitutional Convention to enshrine slavery. The
South played it to end fugitive slave laws and hold the north hostage for fifty
years prior to the civil war. Lincoln played it to help win the civil war, and
Republicans used it to reconstruct the South. The Democrats played it to begin
segregation and the Republicans played it under Nixon to create the modern race
based Republican party. You get the picture.
By 1947 the plays of the race
card had resulted in a segregated America reflected in sports where parallel
worlds of sports, especially baseball coexisted in the economic and cultural
shadow of professional baseball. In 1947 amid the tumult of the post war years,
Branch Rickey the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers played the race card big time
in America’s biggest sport and source of heroic narrative baseball. He
shattered the rebuilt Maginot line of cultural and legal racial
segregation—separate but equal—by bringing in Jackie Robinson—number 42—to be
the first Negro player in the major leagues.
I once asked my dad, a midwestern
moderate Republican, why he so strongly supported civil rights He looked at me
and said, “I fought with Negroes in the war. They defended our country. They
deserve their rights.” That’s all he said and that’s all he needed to say. His
comments always stayed with me and came through very powerfully when I watched
the stately and careful story of how Jackie Robinson broke the color line in
baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the movie 42.
Americans have always played
out their diverse tensions in their movies. It could be the racist old south
defense of Birth of a Nation or the
stories of multi-ethnic platoons in World War II movies or the gangster or
Indian stereotypes in the movies of the thirties and fifties. Movies could
respond to and help move the culture in revising these narratives as the great
Godfather moves rethought the gangster narratives.
Sports has always thread
through American consciousness as a source of identity, community and proxy
conflict. Sports movies ally two powerful cultural forces and can address head
on the many racial and gender issues. 42
continues that tradition as well as the recalling of how raw and real
racism was and is with such movies as GloryRoad and Remember the Titans.
In post war America baseball
occupied a unique spot as THE American sport. It riveted attention of the
entire country and provided endless narratives of heroic figures. The Post-war
era heightened this heroic focus because so many great players had fought in
the war. Bob Feller, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial or Ted Williams now returned as
heroes of war and sport. 42 focuses
upon how this time provided a window of opportunity for Rickey to attack the
fundamental taboo and color line that segregated America into two decidedly
unequal cultures.
Played with crusty and
mumbling charm and surprising strength by Harrison Ford, Branch Rickey laid the
ground work carefully having scouted the Negro leagues for years. He prepared his
own assessment of the various candidates to be the first. He turned down several
candidates for not possessing the type of mental toughness to endure the abuse
and stress of being the first. He thought and culled as much as the civil
rights movement trained its workers during the fifties to prepare for the abuse
and violence they would experience in the south.
Questioned by his own staff
about the wisdom of the choice, Rickey responded in terms of sheer money and
talent. He would draw in Negro fans and tap an untapped reservoir of motivated
talent that could give the Dodgers a competitive edge. In public he explained the
race card as about money and talent.
The movie does a fine-grained
job of showing how important support from the top remained. When Robinson’s
minor league manager said, “not bad for a nigger,” Rickey informed him “you call
him that again, you are fired.” The lesson remains true; changing a culture
requires unwavering support from the top.
Rickey turns to the famed
Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League. Jackie Robinson, played with stoic
intensity by Chadwick Boseman, is chosen. In Rickey’s eyes Robinson had served
as an officer in the war with a record of “insubordination” that really meant
he refused to knuckle under to racism. Robinson came battle tested and a
veteran. He had played baseball for UCLA that meant he could get along with
white players. And he played the game with ferocious abandon dedicated to
winning. To Rickey’s eye he possessed the unflinching physical courage and
toughness that could help him endure what Rickey believed would be a hell storm
of abuse and assault.
Robinson and his new wife worried
with good reason about doing this. But the money and the chance to prove that
he could compete at the best level drew him. Robinson saw himself as an
individual, an incredibly strong and proud and private man, who never grew
comfortable with being a symbol. A true American he wanted to achieve success
as an individual, but had to serve as a reluctant but strong symbol and
pathfinder. The movie makes clear that his marriage remained his source of
strength and renewal amid the brutal attacks.
In a crucial meeting between
Branch Rickey and Robinson, Rickey race baits Robinson. It infuriates Robinson,
the anger the pain explode, “You want a player who doesn't have the guts to fight
back?” Branch Rickey responds, “No.
I want a player who's got the guts *not* to fight back.”
Rickey knows that Robinson is
a living test and he cannot flunk it or a whole generation of young raising
Negro players will have their dreams postpone longer. Rickey ends with the warning “Your enemy
will be out in force. But you cannot meet him on his own low ground.”
The movie lances through the
endless private and wounding moments that illustrate the sheer tax of being
black in America. Having to hide in a car being chased by rednecks. Having to
live in a private home in a different part of town from the team. Having to
fight hotels to be housed and served with the team. Having to take a shower
separate from his teammates. Being ignored by cabs. Having to have a driver
just to protect him. Walking down a street of white people abraded his life
with endless affronts. This black tax exists today, very real, but more hidden.
And yet amid the endless fear
and tenseness moments of grace occur. A white worker crosses the street to
Robinson and his wife who both go into a defensive crouch. The worker simply
thanks and congratulates him and tells him that he supports him. You can see
some of this in the crowds slowly changing expectations.
Yet one scene remains with
anyone who sees the movie. A young boy sits with his father and watches the
game. The boy admires Robinson’s skill and drive, but when his dad starts
screaming “go home nigger” and everyone else does too, the boy, almost in tears,
joins his father, screaming at the player he wanted to admire. As another
fifties’ artifact stated in South Pacific, “you have to teach
them to hate.” It can feel like a bludgeon sometimes, but the movie records the
reality of the daily assault, and we need to remember who we were and are
trying to move beyond.
The press of outside culture
never ends, but the deepest wounds to Robinson came from within the game. His
own teammates signed a petition to not play if Robinson played. Leo Durocher
the Dodger’s brash and brilliant manager played to perfection by Christopher
Meloni ended those attacks and created enough fear among them to keep overt
racist attacks at a distance. Durocher prophetically reminded the players that
they played as a protected oligopoly. When the color line broke, a whole
generation of talented, driven and skilled Negro players would compete for
their jobs. A prophecy, for good and bad, that modern rosters of professional
teams prove.
Durocher, however, is suspended
for a year when he has an affair, and the Catholic Youth Organization condemns
him. Facing a CYO boycott, the baseball commissioner suspends Durocher.
Durocher’s replacement, the burnt out and ineffectual Burt Shotton is utterly
incapable of standing up for Robinson. Robinson is stranded alone in the
clubhouse while teammates lead by pitcher Fritz Ostermueller harass and undercut Robinson.
Yet slowly Robinson’s skill,
ferocious drive to win and dignity win over a few players. One actually invites
Robinson to start taking showers with the team in a very funny awkward scene.
His team does not support
him; his manager is ineffectual and while slowly winning some players and fans,
the worst remains. Branch is called by owners of teams, especially Cincinnati,
who demand the Dodgers not play Robinson against them. Rickey does not back
down and suggests the other teams forfeit.
The movie reaches its moral
and critical center when the team plays Philadelphia. Ben Chapman, played with
stunning guile and meanness by Alan Tudyk , stands at the dugout and baits and
screams “nigger, nigger, nigger.” The
whole theater reacts in discomfort at this casual stilleto striek. Chapman abuses
Robinson and taunts Robinson’s quiet teammates with a moral ugliness that is real
and effective. Here and only here do we see the sheer physical and mental
anguish and toll it takes upon Robinson’s herculean dignity. In real life he
kept this inside and at home.
The Philly manager just explains
that players all each other “wops” and “kikes< during the game. Chapman
claims its all in good fun. It is not, he and everyone else knows it especially
Robinson’s shamed teammates who do not support him. The cowardice of his
teammates and ineffectual manager allow it to continue. Rickey intervenes and forces baseball to act
and get a public apology.
The endless moral and mental
abuse slowly starts to awaken some of his teammates. Several had asked to be
traded by Rickey and in one case he accommodates them sending him to
“Pittsburgh!!” of all places.
But Pee Wee Reese (well played by Lucas Black),
southerner, veteran, good boy, basically decent man, does not know what to do.
All he wants to do is “Play the game.” “Just play the game.” He wished the
symbolic power would go away, but it is not longer just a game. It has become a
morality play for the whole nation and the whole nation’s identity. Reese and
others are asked to live up to the code of the game and cover their teammates
back.
At Cincinnati, a very
southern and hostile town, Reese walks and puts his arm around Robinson as a
gesture of solidarity before the city and Reese’s own relatives. At one level
Robinson cannot understand it, but to Reese and to many others, it marks one
small step, steps we are still taking each day. Reese himself had ultimately
been pushed over the line by admiration for Robinson’s play and Robinson’s own
support of players. Reese knows his own anger at how the Philly manager had treated
Robinson, but he is also angry at himself and the team for breaking the code
and not supporting their own teammate.
The movie works well to
remind us again of where we come from and how powerful sports can be for our
collective identity. It also reminds us of how hard and lonely and ugly it can
be to be a true pathfinder. We understand what so many black professionals
understand that they must be better than their white peers just to be
considered equal. At some points the inwardness of Robinson hides the full
cost. His Spartan dignity and devotion to his wife and winning cover much of
the sorrow and pain. But in real life Robinson died at the age of 52 of a heart
attack, long before he should. Perhaps the internal cost of the external hatred
he endured with so much self-possession.
42 does miss
how deeply woven the Jackie Robinson story is into the fabric of the times. Truman
integrated the army. Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial. Paul Robeson
stalked the stages, and Thurgood Marshall and the NCAA pushed up the intensity
of their efforts in the south. Robinson mattered not just to baseball, but as
an unavoidable and daily reminder that change challenged America’s definition
of itself in the daily sports stage where many Americans defined themselves.
America’s self-narrative
depends profoundly upon its ideal of meritocracy. Sports enthrall us because it
is played out drama in real time with no
certainty and because it is brutally meritocratic. Elite sports exposes
incompetence with glaring harshness. Money and fame and even last year’s
success does not matter. All that matters is how you compete and contribute to
winning. Only the best or the ones that fit into a winning team concept succeed
and flourish.
Robinson opened an arena
where as Leo Durocher predicted an entire generation of elite trained and
hungry black athletes were waiting to come and take protected white players
jobs. You can even spot the modern counter argument by one sportscaster that
Negro players have inherent physical advantages that make them perfect for
sports. A Negro’s very success in sports becomes a confirmation of their lack
of status in other realms. Racism and the race card plays both ways in many
games as trump and counter-trump
Robinson displayed
extraordinary grace and self-discipline and the courage not to fight back under
ugly and grueling conditions. Yet just as the black soldiers earned the
grudging respect and admiration of their fellow soldiers in World War II,
Robinson earned the respect of his teammates not just with his skill but his
courage and his focused fury on the base paths.
The true accomplishment of
these sports narratives lies in something deeper and more human. In a private
conversation Robinson asks Rickey about why Rickey did this. Robinson refuses
to accept the normal economic answers. Rickey talks of his own failure to
protect and help succeed a young talented black player in his early coaching
days. Then he speaks of the great and vital success of Robinson. He watched a
young sandlot boy bend over and rub his hands in dirt just like Robinson. He
looked at Robinson and said, there it is “a white boy wants to be like a black
man.”
