Dusty Baker Likes It Hot
Our Race Non-Discussion
Cubs manager Dusty Baker, who is black, made news this weekend with these comments:
Baker, in his first year as Cubs manager, delved into heat and skin color when talking to reporters Saturday, saying black and Hispanic players hold up better under the summer sun and heat.
"It's easier for most Latin guys and it's easier for most minority people because most of us come from heat. You don't find too many brothers in New Hampshire and Maine and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Right?" he said with a chuckle.
"We were brought over here for the heat, right? Isn't that history? Weren't we brought over because we could take the heat?"
"Your skin color is more conducive to heat than it is to the lighter-skinned people. I don't see brothers running around burnt," Baker said before the Cubs beat St. Louis at Wrigley. "That's a fact. I'm not making this up. I'm not seeing some brothers walking around with some white stuff on their ears and noses."
The national media and talk radio have been up in arms about Baker's statements, and rather than retract them, he reiterated them before the Cubs' game on Monday.
This is the state of race dialogue in the 21st Century. Baker talks about skin color and history. Some people get uncomfortable with the suggestion that blacks and latinos may be different than whites. Some people decry the double-standard that exists: When a black man like Baker makes the comments, it's a news story. When a white man makes those comments, it usually leads to the loss of a job and an appearance tour by Jesse Jackson.
Race is such a non-topic in this country. It impacts so much of what goes on, yet most people dance around the issue. I read an interview with Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed in The Onion, and he had this to say about race:
I can explain why a white boy like myself didn't write about race: You can't. You couldn't then. You can't now. Don't touch it. Run. Hide. Smile and say you love everybody equally, and don't make any jokes as you back out of the room. Race and humor only work in a comedy club with exclusively black comedians. That's it. There isn't a shade of a chance for anything resembling a real discussion about race occurring publicly in this country for another... well, ever. Tirades, yes. Conversations that don't become tirades after the first sentence spoken? No.
I think that's a pretty cynical viewpoint, but I also think it's probably pretty true. Yes, Breathed is talking about humor and race, but if you can't joke about something in any way, it means there is a trouble buried waaaay too deep to be healthy.
Is Breathed's approach the right one? As an example, let's look at Baker's comments. I'll hypothetically adopt two viewpoints, one that agrees with Baker, and one that doesn't.
If I agree with Baker, I say: "Yes, he's right, you know. People with darker skin pigments are better able to tolerate sun exposure. If you take an average Irishman and put him in the Mexican desert, he's going to get burned to a crisp if he doesn't take care to cover himself and put on lotion and whatnot. And wouldn't it make sense for guys who grew up in heat to be more comfortable in heat, and vice-versa? I grew up in Kansas and had mild winters. It took me many years to get used to Minnesota. Isn't Baker's comment just common sense?"
Of course, if it's such common sense, how come nobody is coming out and saying that? Must not be that common. Of course, Baker goes a bit beyond that, into stereotypical "Black players don't like the cold." Which is very similar to "Black folks can't swim", or "Black people don't have the necessities to be a field manager or quarterback." Very slipperly slope that none of us want to be on.
But, let's say I take umbrage to Baker's comments, as has been the reaction of many observers: "Baker is just flat wrong. Black people and Latinos and white people all are capable of playing equally in hot or cold weather. We are all the same. Some are different, but those differences cross racial boundaries. To call attention to the genetic differences relating to skin pigment encourages further differentiation based on that difference."
Hmm...I'm not sure I could really say all of that with a straight face, either. Maybe the best thing really is to say nothing, back out of the room, and pretend Dusty Baker never brought any of this up.
What Baker said was probably not a very smart thing to say, for a lot of reasons. For one thing, he shifts the focus to skin color, when it's clear that a white guy who grew up in the deep south might have just as much aversion to cold (and ability to avoid sunburn) as any "brother", as Baker would put it. Environment plays a large role, just as genetics probably does.
And there's the word that is the real bugaboo: genetics. Jimmy the Greek got fired for his amateur genetics lesson. I'm not sure I understand the strict compulsion to deny our differences, instead of celebrating them. The irony is that Jimmy the Greek and Dusty Baker would probably both be in agreement about "history", again as Baker puts it, and how that history has shaped our society today.
Finally, as a backdrop to all of this, there is a discussion about race that is finally starting to take place, coming from an unlikely source: The Bush Administration. As Bush weighs how heavily to involve the U.S. in the struggles of Liberia and Africa as a whole, it is by definition leading many of the key players in this Administration to comment on our shared history in strong terms of condemnation for past U.S. actions (though, not a formal apology-wouldn't want to give those reparations folks any legal ground...).
In other words, there has been a lot of talk about slavery lately, and how it has changed the two continents. Could this be the beginning of the U.S.'s prolonged involvement as a force for positive change in Africa? Only time will tell. This is still a 400 year old problem, and we see the impacts plain as day all over Africa, especially in the horn and lower west coast. That we are weighing involvement in Liberia, a country started by former U.S. slaves in 1822, is especially interesting.
Maybe we won't ever be able to get to a point where we can come to grips with who we all are until we fix what we broke in the first place. Maybe we can't fix it at all. It surely won't happen in my lifetime. But I would like to think that there would come a day when Berkeley Breathed's thoughts on race wouldn't seem so damn sensible.
12:21:36 PM 
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