Philanthropic Tokenism Today
By Chris Caldwell
Hollywood will never make a movie about Curt Flood, the black man who arguably did more for professional African American athletes than Jackie Robinson. In 1969, Flood, having fulfilled his contract as an all-star centerfielder with the St. Louis Cardinals, defied Major League Baseball’s “Reserve Clause” by demanding the right to negotiate with any team he chose. He lost a year’s salary, was largely blackballed by baseball, but ultimately opened the door to free agency as we know it in professional sports. Few know his story, while everyone knows the powerful story of Jackie Robinson. Sadly, more people know the name of Branch Rickey (the white man who hired Robinson) than know the name of Curt Flood. That’s a telling little piece of information.
Permit me a moment more on the history of my favorite baseball team. (And God’s favorite baseball team, too. “Cardinals.” Think about it.) Few know the story of the 1964 champions from St. Louis. As David Halberstam tells in his wonderful book, October 1964, baseball maintained a firm unwritten policy of tokenism for 17 years — 17 years after Robinson joined the league. Yes, teams could have one black player, maybe two; but for 17 years, teams remained almost completely white by design. The 1964 Cardinals broke ranks and fielded a team featuring not only Curt Flood, but also fellow black players Bob Gibson, Lou Brock and Bill White. Their team defeated the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, and the days of tokenism were over in Major League Baseball. All teams were forced to either hire on the basis of talent, regardless of race, or fail to successfully compete with teams that did, like the Cardinals.
Why do we remember Robinson and forget Flood? Why do we remember the man who broke down the color line, but forget the team that finally brought real integration to baseball? For me, the answer is the powerful hold tokenism still has on the white mind. When it comes to race, we love stories of black exceptionalism and personal agency because those stories inoculate us against the urgent need for conversations about the deeper issues of structural racism and the ongoing economic oppression of American descendants of slaves.
Jackie Robinson opened the door. But for 17 years after his groundbreaking integration of professional baseball, baseball swung the door open just a crack for only one or two people at a time. Robinson is remembered as a smiling gentleman who rose above the ugliness and vitriol he endured from white bigots both in the stands and on the field. But it was a righteously angry black man, Curt Flood, armed with a good lawyer, who brought structural change to professional baseball. And it was black right-handed fastball pitcher Bob Gibson, who notoriously threw at the head of any player who disrespected him, who led the Cardinals to the championship. Again, Hollywood is never going to make a movie about Curt Flood or Bob Gibson although I wish they would. Why? Because although Hollywood chooses more often than not to help theater audiences escape reality, it is easier for viewers to feel good about Jackie Robinson than it is to face the damning statistics and realities of the sordid history of “America’s Pastime.” That sordid history reflects so much in American society that cries out for reparations and structural change.
Don’t get me wrong, Jackie Robinson was a great man, and his story is compelling and important. If you drive down Main Street in Louisville, you will see a huge photo of Louisville’s Pee Wee Reese with his arm around his black teammate Robinson. The photo celebrates diversity, as it should. It also celebrates a white person who helped to make it happen for a black person. We whites like to celebrate any positive role one of us may have had — a bit too much, I think. Stories like Robinson’s, stories like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and movies such as “Hidden Figures,” “The Help,” “The Green Mile,” and “The Green Book” play well with white audiences. They enable us to face racism while at the same time we can celebrate a noble white person helping to save the day. Also note that none of these stories depict heroes who took on oppressive structures in society beyond a personal level. They are not the stories of reformers really attacking the roots of the economic racism that persists today. They are stories of black exceptionalism and their white friends. They are movies we white people can enjoy while at the same time living in a large wealthy neighborhood with one black family in it.
Some would say my take on movie tokenism is too harsh. Don’t these strong black characters push back against injustice? Don’t they (with the help of their white champions) push their way through the front door and into the dining room? Yes, they do. They find their way to the tea and sandwiches, as it were, but the money’s not in the dining room. The safe is in the back of the house, and the tea and sandwiches, while appreciated, aren’t the real issue.
Consider how tokenism masks real issues by thinking for a moment about, well, tokens. The genius of tokenism is that it influences us precisely because we fail to notice it. Consider the “free” tokens children get at pizza parlor game rooms. These pennies from heaven just appear at the end of the birthday party. It’s amazing! Free stuff. And if we play our tokens right, we get even more valuable free stuff, such as plastic alligators. To the child, it’s a wonder; but to the parent, it’s a racket. It’s 75 cents of free entertainment and kitsch in return for Mom or Dad paying $10 dollars for $2 dollars-worth of food.
So it is with tokenism and race. Token programs, token seats at the table, token characters — all of which make us feel better about race, but which also, at one level at least, make it less likely that we will deal with the damnable ongoing effects of deep structural racism. So am I opposed to stories about Jackie Robinson and “The Green Book”? No. But my point is that we must not let such entertaining stories be destinations. They are points along the way; but if we don’t move beyond such points, we are left feeling better than we should about ourselves as whites, and American descendants of slaves are left on the current road to negative wealth as a people.
In other words, we do well to see the danger in the overt racism of Donald Trump and the white nationalists who follow him. But it behooves us also to see the dangers in an inconsequential liberalism that feels too good about itself. In the prescient words of Benjamin Mays, in his final address to Morehouse College students in 1967:
The Negro’s battle for justice and equality in the future will be against the subtlety of our “liberal friends” who will wine and dine us in the swankiest hotels, work with us, and still discriminate against us when it comes to money and power. The battle must be won because, for a long time, the wealth of this nation will be in the hands of white Americans and not Negroes. The abolition of economic, political, and philanthropic discrimination is the first order of the day, not for the good of Negroes alone, but for the nation as a whole. (Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Speaks, p.171-172).
The 1967 version of Benjamin Mays knew 2019 white liberals better than most 2019 white liberals know ourselves. We live in a time when white liberals feel better than we should about racial progress, even as we overlook profound racial injustices. My city, Louisville, Kentucky, is a case in point. Louisville is a moderately liberal city that prides itself on its compassion and inclusivity, while at the same time being one of the most racially segregated cities in America. Let me offer two examples of my city’s inability to see beyond its own tokenism.
First, consider the Filson Historical Society which exists to document and teach the history of Louisville. The Filson, as we call this institution celebrating black history, exudes a moderate liberalism befitting its Louisville home. It has a solid and growing collection of local African American materials and, during Black History Month, it had some fine lectures that drew small crowds to its lecture hall downtown. So far, so good. But the big, high profile lectures, with authors flown in for the occasion, are held in overwhelmingly white east Louisville, where I live. Three recent lectures drew around 300 people each, around 10 times the number who saw the Black History lectures downtown. The topics were: 1. Women who worked as code breakers during World War II; 2. Dwight Eisenhower; 3. “The Heirs of the Founders,” about the generation of leaders after American founders. All of these are worthy topics that would be of interest to American descendants of slaves. Women code breakers? Consider “Hidden Figures” and its popularity as a movie. Eisenhower? Consider the high percentage of African Americans in our military. Founders? Consider “Hamilton.” Yet, here’s the thing: About 900 people attended these three events combined; but as I searched the crowd each time for black people, I believe I saw one black person at one event. That’s 0.1% in a city that is 22% African American. My point is not that the Filson is a discriminatory organization. My point is that I see my fellow whites come and go from these events unfazed by the way the crowd reflects the deep economic and housing discrimination that persists in our city in 2019. The Filson and we whites assume all is well due to some progressive steps. But we are far too comfortable with the segregated status quo that reigns in our city.
Or consider one Louisville example of the “philanthropic discrimination” Benjamin Mays mentioned. We have in our city The West End School, a small private school in the heart of overwhelmingly black west Louisville. It educates a small number of elementary and middle school young men. Its website states that its graduates have received $2 million dollars in scholarships to “many of the top private schools in the state.” Founded in 2005 in a truly selfless act of service by someone who walked away from a high paying job at a private school, the school is meeting an important need. One of my students at Simmons College had a son who attended The West End School, and the father is very thankful for all the school did for his son. I appreciate the school and wish it all the best.
Consider, however, the school’s limited mission and limited effect. Millions of dollars have poured in, surely almost all of it from outside west Louisville. These dollars are funding a white-led school to serve black kids, and the statistic they cite to measure success is scholarships to move their students into exclusive white private schools. It’s not wrong for parents to want this expensive and exclusive education for their kids. High school degrees from such schools can provide a key step in helping a small number of young black men to gain the credentials needed to thrive in the dominant white culture that is our economic and cultural engine.
But what troubles me is the degree to which I’ve seen white Louisvillians view The West End School as some sort of magic remedy. For 15 years I was pastor to a wealthy white congregation in east Louisville. There I tried to draw attention to the racial and economic injustices in our city, especially the plight of west Louisville and its overwhelmingly black population. Along the way, I lost track of the number of times my parishioners responded to my preaching on this topic by dropping the name of The West End School and their support of it. God bless the West End School and the 50 or so students it helps. But what about the tens of thousands in west Louisville who attend public schools? What about the underprepared students from west Louisville who graduate each year, students I see consistently showing up in my classrooms at Simmons College of Kentucky? The West End School is helicoptering kids out of the devastation that is west Louisville, and white people flock to support their efforts, but what about the deep economic and racial issues that created and sustain the devastation?
For a few semesters, I taught Introduction to Sociology at Simmons, covering the main two schools of thought in sociology. The first is the functionalist approach of Durkheim which understands society as an organism where life prospects rise by improving the opportunities for people to exercise their personal agency within the system. Functionalism can lead to social change, but is the more conservative school of thought. The second, juxtaposed against Durkheim, is the conflict theory espoused by Karl Marx and others. This branch of sociology (with roots in Marx’s thought, but is not Marxist) assumes society is a competition, not simply an organism. I helped my students to see the power in both schools of thought while I steered them more in the direction of conflict theory. “If you want to know how a society works,” I would say, “Follow the power, and especially follow the money.”
Curt Flood followed the money and brought his lawyer with him. His is not a feel-good story for white people. But his story demonstrates how to bring deep and lasting structural change to an inherently discriminatory system. Reparations are not a feel-good topic for white people. Reparations move us beyond tokens of cordiality in the front living room to where the money is, at the back of the house where only close friends and family may enter.
Kevin Costner, the frequent white hero character in movies, will undoubtedly never be cast in a more accurate movie that lays bare what was done and what is still being done to black descendants of American slaves in America. But feel-good movies, tea and sandwiches, and token changes are not enough. Not by a long shot. My students don’t need Americans to watch “Remember the Titans.” They need a level playing field, and a fair chance to show the world their capacities. They need and deserve real investment in black-led institutions and in black communities. Tokens are not solutions.
— Dr. Chris Caldwell serves on the faculty and in the administration of Simmons College of Kentucky, a Historic Black College founded in 1879.
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