The "attack" on Jackie Robinson's legacy, as imagined by Washington Post writer

There’s good news and bad news regarding Jerry Brewer, the second-string race-man on the Washington Post’s sports page. The good news is that, after a shockingly poor outing on the Post’s front page, Brewer has returned to the sports page.

The bad news is that Brewer marked his return with an embarrassing article about Jackie Robinson that occupied the entire front page of the sports section, plus three more pages. Brewer’s rant was the only article that appeared on four of the first five pages of the sports section that day.

The springboard for Brewer’s piece is the removal and destruction of a statue of Robinson in Wichita, Kansas. Sounds like a racist hate crime, no?

But those willing to plow their way deep into Brewer’s piece discover that the removal was the act of a guy who says his purpose was to sell the metal to a scrap dealer. Brewer expresses skepticism about this motive, but offers no evidence to the contrary. In fact, the evidence, readily available but ignored by Brewer, strongly supports the view that profit was the motive.

Thus, the destruction of Robinson’s statue stands in sharp contrast to the toppling of statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in Portland, Oregon by BLM and Native American protesters, respectively (among many other acts of vandalism aimed at statues of our two greatest presidents). Unlike in Robinson’s case, these acts were ideologically motivated.

As hard as it may be for some to believe, Washington and Lincoln were more heroic than Jackie Robinson. And Lincoln did vastly more for blacks.

Brewer uses the non-story from Wichita to set up his thesis that White America has created a myth around Jackie Robinson — the myth that Robinson’s story is, in Brewer’s words, ”compelling evidence of diminishing racism” and that it’s misconceived “as a conclusion” to the story of racism in America.

Brewer cites no one who makes either claim. There is a massive amount of evidence that racism in America has diminished since Robinson’s time. Barack Obama’s election and reelection is one piece of it. Brewer’s ability to commandeer the Washington Post’s sports page to moan about racism is another. But, I’ve never heard anyone say that Robinson’s success story is compelling evidence that racism has diminished.

Indeed, it was not until nearly 20 years after Robinson broke the color barrier and nearly 10 years after he retired that blacks obtained basic legal rights through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If there was a compelling case for such legislation — and there was — it cannot be true that the integration of baseball was viewed as evidence that racism and racial discrimination had diminished significantly.

Robinson’s story has never been viewed as a conclusion to the struggle to combat racism and grant civil rights. It wasn’t even considered the conclusion to that struggle in baseball. Rather it was just the beginning.

Every baseball fan of a certain age knows that the American League was still to be integrated after Robinson’s debut in the National League. Most old fans know that even after Robinson retired at the end of the 1956 season, the Boston Red Sox still had no black players.

A few fans of the old Washington Senators may remember that when Robinson retired, no American-born black had yet played for that forlorn team. And it’s well known that black players were discriminated against during spring training in Florida until well into the 1960s.

Brewer, in short, is shooting at a straw man.

As for his claim that severe racist persists in America, Brewer offers no support. He refers to “systemic patterns that fortify marginalization.” But this is simply a resort to buzz words. Brewer doesn’t tell us what these patterns are; nor does he provide evidence of their existence.

The closest he comes is a passing reference to “disenfranchising voters.” Again, Brewer is just deploying buzz words. He offers no evidence of significant disenfranchising of black voters. And the alleged paradigm case of disenfranchising — Georgia’s revised voting law — has been debunked.

Brewer complains that a book about Robinson — Thank You, Jackie Robinson — “showed up on a list of books that Duval County in Florida chose not to have shelved in the school district.” Brewer admits that the book wasn’t banned. The County simply chose not to purchase it.

I haven’t read the book and thus have no opinion about the County’s decision. But if Brewer’s description of the book is accurate, the decision undercuts Brewer’s thesis.

According to Brewer, the book is a “touching 128-page piece of children’s literature” about a fatherless white boy and a black cook who bond over Robinson’s exploits in baseball. Brewer claims that one county’s decision not to carry this book in school libraries amounts to an “attack” on “the legacy of Robinson.”

But it’s Brewer who views the notion of racial bonding through the Robinson story as a “myth” perpetrated by whites — “a generic salve” to avoid serious discussion of (alleged) systemic racism in America. If that’s the case, then the absence of “Thank You, Jackie Robinson” from the school libraries of Duval County should be applauded for not dishing out the “generic salve” that supposedly stands in the way of confronting racism.

It’s bad enough that Brewer is writing nonsense about the (alleged) misuse of Robinson’s legacy. He should at least keep his story straight.

Brewer points out that Robinson is a more complex figure than the one represented in popular accounts of his life. That’s true. But it’s also true of nearly every important figure in history — black or white.

Unfortunately, Brewer himself, in trying to portray Robinson as a militant, passes over some of Robinson’s complexity. For example, he ignores the fact that Robinson was a Republican and supporter of Richard Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaign, as well as Nelson Rockefeller’s attempt to win the GOP nomination in 1964. In addition, he doesn’t mention that, as vice president for personnel of Chock Full O’ Nuts (“the heavenly coffee”) part of his job was to discourage union activity.

Colin Kaepernick, Jackie Robinson was not (and that’s a good thing). Nor was he Jim Brown or Bill Russell (which is okay, too).

In seeking to dispel what he considers the Robinson myth, Brewer tries to invent another myth. The original “myth” seems closer to the truth.

UPDATE: Perhaps fearing that his first two lefty pieces won’t sufficiently impress the left-liberals who award the Pulitzer Prize, Brewer has published another multi-page grievance article. This one is about opposition to transgender athletes competing against girls and women.

Brewer’s article amounts to nothing more than an ad hominem attack on those who complain about the unfairness of girls and women having to compete against biological boys and men. According to Brewer, these people care nothing about fairness. They are just seizing on a grievance that resonates with the general public as a way of advancing a conservative agenda that includes trampling on the rights of the LGBTQ community.

Brewer, of course, offers no evidence to support his view his attempt at mind reading. He has mastered the art of attacking conservatives with unsupported assertions.

Maybe Brewer belongs in the Post’s news section, after all.

The new publisher of the Post has noted that the audience for its writers has been “halved.” The editor who’s filling the sports page with Brewer’s left-wing rants seems determined to slash the Post’s readership even further.