Jackie Robinson: “DEI hire”

Since Donald Trump, who over the years has demonstrated his racism time and time again, has returned to the White House, he has promised to, echoing much of the racially insensitive political hard-right, abolish Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs in the federal government, the belief is that having women and racial minorities actually waters down efficiency and that positions and promotions should be based solely on “merit.”

What he and others truly don’t understand is that the concept of DEI is not only not new but has been practiced for decades to get opportunities to “underrepresented” folks into certain fields that had been previously denied to them due to their color or gender.

Exhibit A: Jackie Robinson.

Of late a number of conservatives have said that Robinson earned his spot on the Brooklyn Dodgers because he was a great player — and yes, he proved to be a great player — but that had nothing do with his being the first black man to play Major League Baseball in the modern era, called up from the Montréal Royals, the Dodgers’ top farm club, on April 15, 1947.

See, there was never a statutory ban on black players, “Jim Crow” laws being illegal in many states where teams operated. (Recall that no MLB teams called the Deep South home until the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, well after the start of the civil-rights movement; only in former slave state Missouri, where the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, the latter moving to Baltimore to become the Orioles, was that even an issue.) In those days team owners had a “gentlemen’s agreement” to keep black players out, largely due to the large number of Southerners on team rosters.

Then-general manager Branch Rickey, who did want to integrate the game, had several things in mind. One, he saw MLB as stodgy and boring and wanted to bring the excitement that black players, then in the Negro Leagues, could provide, with their base-stealing and defensive flair. Two, he gambled, successfully, that having a black man in the lineup would bring a whole new fan base, not to mention money, into the Dodgers organization. (One of those fans was a black man in Puerto Rico whose name is familiar to us here in Pittsburgh: Roberto Clemente, who actually was a Dodgers farmhand until selected by the Pirates in that day’s version of the Rule 5 Draft.)

But it simply wasn’t sufficient to call up the best black ballplayer. Because he was headed into uncharted territory, with likely the majority of black men in general having the proverbial chip on their shoulder anyway, Rickey needed someone who would not react to the inevitable abuse, slights and insults, at least for three years — that is, exhibit the right temperament and let his playing do the talking. Which led to another goal of Rickey’s: Build team chemistry, with an “us-against-the-world” mentality that might carry a team to a championship, with those not accepting Robinson being cut or traded away. (And it eventually did, in 1956, a couple of years before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, where Robinson grew up and was a four-sport star at UCLA.) Robinson’s presence was said to have inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent crusade to overthrow Jim Crow in the South.

And that is the intent of DEI.

Therefore, it’s an absolute insult to those black folks who actually meet qualifications but, because they’re black and/or female, were seen as less deserving. During his 2020 run for the White House, Joe Biden promised to put a black woman on the Supreme Court; as president, he nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson — who, as things turned out, had higher credentials than anyone already there. Then-vice-president Kamala Harris, after Biden was pushed out of running for reelection and inarguably more qualified than Donald Trump, received the Democratic nomination — but was subsequently blasted as a “DEI hire” who “slept her way to the top” (she did have a relationship with Oakland congressman Willie Brown).

No, the issue was never “merit” — it was a rejection of the power of the entitled-white-and-male “old-boys’ network.” And that’s what Rickey and Robinson blew up.