42 - Part II

I actually ended up talking about the movie a lot longer than I expected, so I decided to just make an additional entry regarding my thoughts that don't directly relate to the movie.

The main take-away from the movie - and from Robinson's life - is that quiet dignity always wins in the end: that keeping your head held high, turning the other cheek, and completing other actions that have been turned into catch phrases that canonize good will always produce positive results.

However, that's not all there is to it.

As I mentioned in the last post, there's a moment when we see that Robinson's journey entails more than that. We can see, in this moment, that there is another side to this story. It's one that I feel isn't told often enough.

At least for black people whose recent ancestry lies in this country, there is a duality that exists in the form of a internal conflict (and if anyone who fits the description I laid out says this is false, they're lying to both you and themselves). We have to balance that quiet dignity that we've both learned and been taught...with the fact that a lot of white people really "ain't [spit]".

*Before anyone goes off the deep end, I know that character trait isn't exclusive to any one group. I'm coming back to that. For now, let me vibe and trust that it'll all make sense in the end. Thanks.

Robinson, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ himself are often used as shining examples of the grace that we can employ and the favor we can achieve by displaying quiet dignity. That said, at some point during some such process we ask ourselves about the worth of people as it relates to our efforts in this area.

And let's not act like we're not provided with lots of opportunity to question. Whether it's a group of people that continually disrespects the President of the United States, one of several groups that thinks it's okay to have segregated proms in 2013, people who speak in code behind computers in comment sections on internet sites, or people who corrupt systems and institutions in such a manner that we consider the structure to be problem; that bin of evidence isn't exactly empty.

Robinson had to deal with a whole lot of white people who weren't about [spit], and many of them proved that trait by doing just that to Robinson and many other black people during that time.

I doubt I have to spell out the differences between then and now, but I'm mentioning them to say that the fight is different now. It's different in many ways, not the least of which is that there are fewer enemies. As that is part of the solution, though; it is also part of the problem.

Who does one trust? How does one know? Yes, this is a concern. No, a lot of people won't say it. Part of the reason it's a concern is that we don't have, as Paul Mooney calls it, the complexion for the protection of the collection. Tie in the country's capitalistic ideals and the stuff from three paragraphs: hopefully this issue is a little more clear.

This isn't to say that there aren't people of other races who could use substantial improvement. Do I ever know of cases with all races of people, especially black people. That knows no bounds...but to get back to black people for a second, time to say one more thing before I get out of here:

I've spent hundreds of words saying that this internal conflict is understandable. I've said it was real. Not once did I say it was right. As understandable and as innate as the conflict is, we (black people) have to move past it. As is the case with any social problem, the (re)solution cannot appear without effort from both sides. Everyone has to see the problem, and everyone has to be willing to solve it.

That's what happened in 42. It happened slowly, and in a societal sense it's still happening...slowly. That said, white people don't get nearly enough credit for the effort they've put in to promote equality. It is against all we know, from a rational and capitalistic sense, to do what a great many of them have done over the last 60-70 years. Everything was in their favor. They worked and sacrificed to counter that, and in many cases they paid similar prices to black people - including death.

They certainly didn't have to, but they did it because it was right. White people elected Barack Obama as president...because they felt he was the best candidate. White people signed legislation promoting equality. White people sang, marched, wrote, stood, acted, promoted...same way black people did. If anyone ever tells you that black people gained equality through an isolated effort, that person is a fool who doesn't deserve the dignity of a correction. That didn't start with Branch Rickey, and it certainly didn't end with him. It hasn't ended yet in any sense.

At any rate, those are the two things I don't think we do enough that would really help. Come to think of it, I don't even recall Robinson thanking Rickey in the movie for anything other than the chance to play baseball. While I consider that to be a minus, I'm waiting for the day that it becomes a plus: when that's all a player needs to thank a GM for. Baseball will get there, and so will society. We just have to work together to make that happen...and for the love of everything, we've got to leave LL Cool J and Brad Paisley out of it.