Roberto Clemente Deserves more Respect than Jackie Robinson

Reiterating Sekou Ture's ill refutable analysis that the role of culture is to inspire and advance the people's struggle for justice and liberation, its important to note that very few entertainers and athletes are worthy of any level of real respect.  Most of them cater to capitalism, prioritizing their potential to earn riches over the conditions of the masses of humanity.  That's the reason so many of them are radio silent in the face of overwhelming attacks against our people.  Some of these entertainers/athletes even adopt and mimic the racist positions articulated by our enemies against us.  They do this in the hopes that their shameful sellout will bring rewards of financial benefit.  

On the flip side, there have always been African athletes who have decided that financial gain isn't important enough for them to disrespect the dignity and legacy of our people's struggle for justice.  We are convinced that contrary to popular belief among Africans within the U.S., Jackie Robinson, the first African to play major league baseball within the U.S., is not among this number of distinguished and courageous athletes of principle.  We say this while being very well informed (more so than many of you who support Jackie Robinson) about the challenged he faced.  We don't in any way diminish the inhumanities he was forced to experience while integrating baseball within the U.S.  In fact, we are so familiar with these challenges that his experiences actually brings into question the healthiness of using his journey as a gauge for how we make progress.

Again, without taking anything away from the disrespect he experienced, Robinson's model during 1947, the year he came up to the Los Angeles Dodgers, was patience and discipline.  Patience in the face of blatant, violent, white supremacy and discipline in being able to never react and/or respond to his inhumane treatment under any circumstances.  This is a very unhealthy message for African people because the inference is that the engine for our progress is based on the pace in which European racists are willing to move.  And, our only recourse is to always be willing to wait on them to accept us.  The philosophical basis of thinking is rooted in a belief that powerless people appealing to the consciousness of systems of power will ultimately result in those systems making the necessary moral adjustments to advance their oppressive behaviors against us.  The problem with this, as Kwame Ture accurately pointed out, is this philosophy relies on this system having a conscience of which it has certainly demonstrated it doesn't.  

Instead, we hold up and advance the notion of Roberto Clemente.  An African born in Puerto Rico, who came to mainland U.S. in the late 1950s, benefiting upon the struggles Robinson encountered.  By the early 60s, Clemente had established himself as one of the best players in baseball as the right fielder for the Pittsburgh, Penn, U.S. Pirates team.  Clemente also established himself as a no nonsense player who would always stand up uncompromisingly for brown athletes.  During those years, professional African players were expected to respect Jim Crow segregation laws within the Southern states of the U.S.  That meant being the best players on the field who Europeans would pay money to see perform while then being unable to stay at and eat at hotels those same Europeans inhabited.  These players were also expected to remain silent on the emerging civil rights movements and most, like Willie Mays, etc., complied.  Clemente refused to accept this, regularly mobilizing other players to follow his example and/or staging one man protests on his own.  When news outlets would constantly challenge his behavior as militant and disrespectful, Clemente always responded that it was the African and so-called Latino (Indigenous) players who were being disrespected.  He was also consistently outspoken and supportive of the African struggle for justice taking place within this country at that time.  When Clemente took this position he significantly advanced the struggle Robinson initiated in much the same way Black power movements advanced upon civil rights movements.  Robinson's existence was one of slow patient acceptance in the face of indignities while Clemente's was one of defiant and rebellious resistance.  Clemente refused to let capitalism separate Africa from the fact he descended from a Caribbean nation.  He criticized U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico and he said "Black" people in Puerto Rico were descendants of Africa, just like "Black" people in the U.S.  

Some people will read this and say without Robinson's sacrifices's Clemente's existence could not have happened, especially being as Clemente wasn't born in the continental U.S.  We staunchly disagree with any logic that makes this type of suggestion.  Instead, we build upon our previous assertion that Robinson's approach was harmful because it models acceptance of oppression to our people.  Accept anything to fit into this backward system.  Then, to compound that, Robinson's most egregious crime is his witting, or unwitting, willingness to serve as capitalism's blunt object against the elements within our struggle that the system sees as a threat.  In the 1960s after his retirement from baseball, Robinson became one of capitalism's go to people whenever the system had no answer for militant pronouncements originating within our communities.  I'm sure that Robinson was who Malcolm X was thinking of when he told an interviewer in 1963 that when "the white man has no answer for our charges against him, he turns to some negro trumpet player, some court jester, to represent his position against us."  Robinson was that court jester accusing Malcolm of being a "thug" and preaching to our people that our only salvation was integration into this capitalist system.  When our movement became even more militant after the assassination of Malcolm X, Robinson was one of a number of celebrity African voices who suggested that the advancing militancy of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Black Panther Party, Revolutionary Action Movement, Republic of New Afrika, etc., was being encouraged by forces beyond the African communities.  For those with little knowledge of the cold war era which existed up through the 1980s, these references were to the often repeated accusation that all movements, including the most conservative elements of the U.S. civil rights movement, were directed by communists and socialist parties abroad.  The underlining suggestion here is that African people are incapable of spearheading our own movement and must rely on others to do our thinking for us.  This is the real harm Robinson did to our movement and our people and this damage is so intense that it really overwhelms any positives gained from his 1947 journey to enter baseball as its initial African.  

On a personal level, for the reasons indicated, I never looked at Robinson as a personal hero.  The more I read about his right wing beliefs as a young man, this could never be possible.  Plus, I was forever motivated by a personal experience with Clemente.  In the 1971 baseball playoffs the San Francisco Giants played Clemente's Pirates in the league championship series.  I don't remember how, but somehow, I was able to win a ticket to game two.  The Giants lost that game, but I caught a foul ball in the stands and that enabled me to be permitted to enter the parking area for the players to get that ball signed.  Fortunately for me and my friends, the Pirates bus was having some mechanical issues.  So, there I was waiting in front of Clemente with my friends while he talked to some adults.  Then he turned to our group of about four and started talking to us.  I was only nine years old at the time so I don't remember his exact words, but the context of what he said will never escape me.  He told us we were African people and despite his accent we were the same.  The concept fascinated me.  It made me think of us as a universal people.  I wanted more.  I remember I asked him something about why it was he talked different than I did if we were the same.  He gave a brief explanation that I can't remember, but I do clearly recall his last statement to me.  He said "just remember that we are all Africans!"  He gave me some baseball socks that I still have almost 50 years later.  And, what that exchange meant is I've spent 40 of those 50 years working to bring consciousness to African people about our connection to Africa and the role Africa plays in our future progress.  Roberto Clemente, the baseball player from Puerto Rico, stands as the first person to ever call me an African.  

Robinson died during the 70s and Clemente actually died that next year, in 1972.  He was doing what he always did, fighting for humanity.  He died in a plane crash on December 31, 1972, while taking supplies to survivors of the vicious earthquake in Guatemala, Central America.  

Since their deaths, both former players were easily, and correctly, voted into the baseball Hall of Fame, but Robinson has been treated as the poster child of human progress within baseball.  For our people, the suggestion here is that Clemente better deserves that respect.  In recent years, Clemente's family has humbly requested that his jersey be retired. Currently, Robinson's is the only jersey Major League Baseball has bestowed that honor upon. Shamefully, the Robinson family has stood firmly against Clemente's jersey receiving the same honor.  This is no surprise.  Its actually consistent with the contradictions already indicated.

Look, professional baseball is a capitalist corporation like any other in this society so you will never see a pitch to appeal to these elements for anything on these pages.  What this piece represents is a request for African people, particularly those born and living within the U.S., to recognize that many Africans who contribute to our progress here aren't born here.  And, being the first isn't always the most important thing.  What's much more important isn't when we get there, but how we arrive.  Clemente arrived with dignity.  With a belief that we deserve that in every encounter we experience and his personal interaction with four little ghetto children in San Francisco in 1971, as well as the extremely honorable way in which he perished, reflected his clear belief that carrying that dignity 24/7 was the most important thing he could pass on to us.