The Race Card

Sporting Goods / Manifesto

Fueling my peculiar fascination with race, I was interested to read L.A. Dodgers of Los Angeles centerfielder Milton Bradley's comments about teammate Jeff Kent:

"The problem is, he doesn't know how to deal with African-American people," Bradley said. "I think that's what's causing everything. It's a pattern of things that have been said -- things said off the cuff that I don't interpret as funny. It may be funny to him, but it's not funny to Milton Bradley. But I don't take offense to that because we all joke about race in here. Race is an issue with everything we do in here.

Now you can take Bradley's comments at face value, you can take them as an attack on Jeff Kent, you can discount them because Bradley might actually be crazy, or you can do what sportswriter Michael Ventre does and blame Bradley for exposing Kent's racism. Check out the logic of his column (if there is any):

Of course, racism exists. It’s everywhere, although usually well hidden. It seeps out in subtle ways. It remains a scourge of our society.

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Kent could have a white sheet with eye holes in his closet, for all I know.

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But Bradley should not have allowed his concerns about Kent and race to become public. He should have gone to Kent, man-to-man, and challenged him if he was upset. If a donnybrook ensued, so be it, although they probably would have had to fight to the death because it’s unlikely any of their teammates would come out of the trainer’s room long enough to break it up.

Although I will concede that Kent is a red-assed loner who has a few demerits on his personal record — like the shoving match with Barry Bonds, or the time he lied and said he fell and injured himself while washing his truck when he really did it on a motorcycle — that’s not an excuse for Bradley to inject talk of race into this.

Racism is ugly. A charge of racism is the first step toward irreconcilable differences among teammates. And that’s not what the Dodgers need right now, not if they expect to back into the playoffs.

So let me get this right. Racism is bad. Racism is the "scourge of society." Racism is "usually well hidden," "seep[ing] out in subtle ways." And yet Milton Bradley was wrong for pulling the cover off the racism he experiences every day (real or imagined) at his place of work and discussing it in the public forum? Why? Because the Dodgers have to have cameraderie in order to make a playoff run. Maybe the reason this society has such a problem with race is that we keep it in the closet. And maybe the problem is people like Ventre, who claim to acknowledge that racism is a scourge of society, but believe it isn't such a problem that a frank and open discussion is more important than winning baseball games. I'm sorry Mr. Ventre, but if you really believed what you wrote, if you really believed that racism was a "scourge", then you would value the chance to discuss it openly and not try to shove it back in the closet and chastize any man who dares to claim that something is "about race."

I'm so tired about people claiming to acknowledge all of the harms and problems with race, and pretend to offer solutions but then tell people who want to expose racism and show white people how the "daily nuisances", while each seemingly minor on their own, can add up to a major problem (something akin to water torture), get lambasted for "playing the race card." (See the Bush administration.) Now if only our non-white friends would follow Ventre's advice and beat the hell out of everyone who acted like a racist. That would by idyllic wouldn't it Mr. Ventre?