White Teammates Dodged JR Who Still Scored

Jon Eig’s “The Hug That Jackie Robinson Never Received” in WSJ trashes the Black hero’s white teammates, BUT arguably if ironically serves as lesson for Blacks they never needed condescending white libs to succeed in life.

As Mr. Eig notes in his essay & especially contrary to one dubious legendary account of teammate Peewee Reese early on giving him a hug when booed by racist fans, Mr. Robinson’s white teammates “for the most part, did not take a stand on his behalf … How does Eig know? Jackie said so. True, Robinson would come to acknowledge he eventually got “respect” from the white Dodgers, but only after he wowed them on the field, then, helped lead the team to the World Series & the lucrative bonuses that followed. Robinson, Eig wrote, was under no illusions. As the HOFer would later say: “They hadn’t changed because they liked me any better, they had changed because I could help fill their wallets.”

Ain’t THAT the way of the world though? Wouldn’t it be Malcolm X who would be one of the first to warn his Black brothers & sisters in the 60s that their self-reliance ala a racial pioneer like Robinson was their real ticket to the American Dream & not elite whites who use them to increase own power & push political agendas? Or, drug-peddling gangs that lured them out of the classrooms & into lives of street crime. Somebody listened, at least, some of the time. While millions of inner-city Blacks still vote in overwhelming numbers for white politicians who predictably pander to them before another election with empty progressive promises, then, ignore the same trusting souls … and have done so going on nearly a century now … millions more descendants of slaves used their God-given brain power to go to school, get through college as did Jackie at UCLA & buy a big house in suburbia so their kids could have more opportunities & do even better.

Davd Soul