Sunday, October 23, 2016

World Series of Racism

It's October. The Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians are about to face each other in the World Series. I'm surrounded by ecstatic Cub fans here in the Chicago suburbs, and have more than a few Cleveland fans in my Facebook feed. I'm a Mariners fan who worked at Fenway while in college, but it's a lot of fun to cheer on the Cubs and see them succeed after so many years of disappointment. 

There's something in the underbelly of this year's World Series though, that is eating at me. Like so much of American life, there's a lot on the surface to get excited about. But you don't have to go too deep to expose something ugly, the racism and classism which are unfortunately as ubiquitous a part of our national experience as our love of sports. 

Cleveland's baseball team is named, "the Indians," of course, which in and of itself isn't great. Some teams with that name have shown a way to work with it. Cleveland's Chief Wahoo mascot however, is embarrassingly racist. The picture of the smiling Native American, reducing hundreds of tribes, and rich cultural traditions to a cartoon stereotype? Come on people. It's the 21st century for crying out loud. It's time to retire Chief Wahoo for good. 

And the Cubs? Nothing wrong with their mascot of course, but the Cubs are not Chicago's only baseball team. 

Chicago is a divided city folks. It's a city divided by race and class. The neighborhoods have changed over the years, but there's still defacto segregation in many of them. Nothing illustrates this clearer than Chicago baseball. On the North Side, it's overwhelmingly white, and Cub fans, and the suburbanites tend to identify with them. Then there's the South Side, overwhelmingly Sox fans, overwhelmingly black and Latinx. There are a few Sox fans in the 'burbs, but it's mostly Cub fans.

The White Sox won the World Series in 2005, but you'd never know it when you hear from national sports commentators about how Chicago has waited so long for a World Series. 

What bothers me is the ways that baseball fandom here allows us to camouflage the city's divisions into a sports rivalry, rather than bring these issues into the open and talk about them as real and important. It's socially acceptable to talk about how the Sox ballpark (which should always be called Comiskey) is in a "dangerous" neighborhood, or it's somehow scarier for suburbanites to go to a Sox game, than to visit the "friendly confines" of Wrigley Field.  (For the record, this isn't scientific, but I've visited both ball parks and enjoy them both. I've only ever seen someone get arrested at Wrigley.) 

Assumptions about race and class are all around us in metro-Chicago. Living as a white person in the 'burbs, it's assumed I would be a Cubs fan. When my wife and I were first moving here, a white person in Washington state asked where we were going to live, quickly adding, "north side, of course," as if there were no other option for middle class white people. I've deliberately avoided picking a side in the Chicago baseball rivalry, because, well, I gotta stay loyal to my Mariners, but I don't like the ways this rivalry further deepens the divisions of an otherwise great city. 

I wish we could talk about the fact that Chicago is a different city for people of color vs. white people--in where they live, in where they work, go to school, and how they interact with the police and other city services. We ought not be able to so casually disregard the differences between North side and South side as if it's nothing more than a baseball rivalry. The divisions in this city are serious, and they are deep. They deserve our thoughtful and focused attention. 

Maybe some common ground can can start the conversation. Can we talk about the sorry state of the Chicago Bears?



Saturday, October 8, 2016

Hey Guys, Can We Talk?

This one's for all the guys out there. 

You know how everyone's losing their minds about the conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush? You know how Republicans are falling over themselves to un-endorse Trump, and the GOP is trying to figure out the best way to lose this election? You know how Hillary supporters are pointing and shouting, while also being really happy to see Donald self-destruct? 

I don't want to talk about any of that. 

I want to talk to you about the fact that this conversation is one we have all heard, if not also participated in. I want to talk about the fact that you and I both know guys who talk about women this way, who have done it shamelessly, while being considered the coolest guys in the room. We know that the objectification of women's bodies is something we brag about, something we laugh at, and something we use to make ourselves feel like men. We've heard this conversation in the locker room, in college dorms and frat houses, and you know we've heard it in board rooms. 

You and I know that the problem will not go away if Trump goes away. We know this because the one thing Trump may be telling the truth about is when he said Bill Clinton said similar, or worse, on the golf course. This doesn't surprise us at all. 

What's worse, you know that guys who tried to stop it, who stood up and said, "could you please stop talking about women like they're objects?" You know these are the guys who got laughed at, beat up, ostracized, questioned for their manhood or sexuality. 

Guys - we know this problem is so much worse than Donald Trump. And as Rachel Held Evans said on Facebook yesterday, "Misogyny is not a 'tone' problem, it's a sin problem." It's a sin problem because we are treating our sisters, wives, daughters, and mothers as if they are not human, not beautiful, holy beings, made in God's image. 

Before we send Trump out into the wilderness to take our sins on his back as a scapegoat, let's spend a little time in front of a mirror, a little time in confession, and a lot of time apologizing for creating the world in which a man like Donald Trump can even get to where he is.