There I was minding my own business in my post-racial world reading comments at AoS in an open thread. Several comments back and forth about Hank Aaron saying something strange and illogical, harsh and emotional.
CBS Local - 1 hour ago
Poop.
At the Hall of Fame. Sads.
“Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he’s treated,” Aaron told USA Today Sports.
Aaron continued: “The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.”
Aaron stated that there is still room for improvement for race relations in the U.S.Boy, I'll say. Hank Aaron must imagine the fundamentals of government, purposefully confrontational and disputative system would automatically and magically change to a one-Party system of seamless cooperation once the moment a black person is elected president.
Further anybody who does not go along with that very strong presumption is not just wrong but racist. It must be racism. What else could it be? The question answers itself. There is only that one simple pure perfect answer. It occurs to mind immediately.
Aaron goes on to describe the racist letters he has kept for decades as he was chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record.
“To remind myself that we are not that far removed from when I was chasing the record,” Aaron explained to USA Today Sports. “If you think that, you are fooling yourself. A lot of things have happened in this country, but we have so far to go. There’s not a whole lot that has changed.”I felt a stab in my heart.
My dad did that and we argued about that being bad.
Dad kept a tin box that closed with tin tabs that fit through slots in the square tin lid. An official looking box. I never saw it before that day and here he just whip it out and scurried through the papers. Scary military box. The papers inside all old. Old typewriter that pokes holes in the paper and embosses it like reverse Braille. Corrections on front, oddly acceptable on official documents, inconsistent key strikes. With old-style carbon copies, with their own carbony corrections. The box was filled. Dad re-lived the pain he felt through the incident the papers documented in the retelling to me, re-lived the stress that caused in his life. One single incident he feels affected his career negatively. That box is his side of that old story. It was an unhappy incident. Why he kept it past retirement of a second career is beyond me. Why he dragged it through twelve successive moves while we all pared for weight allowances and then hold it like some sinister treasure for decades did not make sense. Of all the things to save, not that. It lost all significance but not to him. I saw it as an object imbued with negative energy, a thing to be destroyed, ceremoniously if one must. "You're dragging this crap along with you through life like a tail of tin cups clattering away in your psyche. You do not need that. It is harmful. It is poison. Please, get rid of it." At length I lost the argument. He died with that box his possession and we sibs were left to get rid of it for him.
Bummer. Everything is political. Every party, every bar mitzvah, every birthday, funeral, any gathering, family holiday, graduation, celebration, anniversary, is political. Hank Aaron, baseball hero, drags politics and his own specific ruminated injustices and focuses his own original resentment, rearranging historic facts to do so with some fidelity, somehow all those letters he saved up are Republicans now in his mind, and not the Democrat klan of his day. The KKK were Democrats. His Party changed completely reversing from Jim Crow platforms to plantation platforms, the nation changed completely, demographics changed, Baseball changed, but here is Hank Aaron's tail of tin cups clanging clattering part of his own special celebration today .
I saw my dad and his tightly-closed tin box. That received one reading. To me.
Democratic Party: Keeping Racism Alive. Always the 60's for Democrats, for Aaron, always the 40's and 50's. Enjoy your celebration. He's eighty. It's relevant.
Having said all that I understand it. I think that I do. All of that up there is my mind answering somebody else's heart. My mind knows his heart to be wrong and to have been wronged but it cannot reach it. A crossed transaction, my mind cannot reach his heart and the contents of his heart are rejected by mind, known to be wrong. Wrong about how government works, is supposed to work, wrong about motives of others, wrong about the the way people think, wrong about his own party, especially wrong about other people. He saves hateful letters from long-gone people in his own party from the past and imagines them reconstructed political opposites of present.
Hank Aaron, I'm not feeling it. First of all, baseball I'm not feeling. Lem does, my grandpa sure liked it. And I'm not feeling the outright joy you must feel with having a black US president. It doesn't matter to me, so it is not possible for me to feel anything close to joy in that historic fact, that you must feel.
I can try to feel your joy but it is not possible. I'm all, eh, with the black president. Frankly, I'd prefer he be Independent or he be Republican and thirdly Democrat, but your party seems to have cynically jumped things and that is fine with you. I don't expect you to agree to any of this, but this is how I see your Party. I do not feel your joy. I don't get all giddy at the idea of any specific race as president. You do. I leave it at that. You do not.
Everyone must share this incredible joy and if they do not then something is wrong. The joy, national uplifting joy is everything and anything contrary to that is ignoring this historic opportunity for joining the national project of reconciliation goodwill, and worse it pisses on national joy.
That is how I understand the way that you feel. I shouldn't bother. Because now I feel like I'm talking to a woman, feeling above everything else. That is my walk in those clickity clackity cleats shoes.
Too bad. Cannot really care that much for baseball, all the spitting, and I cannot keep up, when I play it. When I actually have the ball I never do know who best to throw to because players are moving and rule One keep your eye on the ball. So conflicting focus right there. When I actually hit the ball I also impulsively throw the bat. Far. Like right over the fence. Everyone ducks for cover and mocks me unsparingly. I don't know why, it just happens. If after the thrill of hitting the ball, I could resist the reaction of tossing the bat and gently set the bat down instead, I would waste critical time getting to the base. So there's that.
And honestly cannot care about racial composition of US president, actually living the MLK dream as it were, yet Aaron cannot see or appreciate that. Hank Aaron is too spectacularly well chuffed with having the first black president to have that first black president treated with the same mixture of love and contempt as any president is treated. To Aaron, Obama is special in all ways not just one way, everything devolves from the joy that should be unmarred, everything else becomes lower branches down the trunk of concerns. Even unnecessary national debt to the tune of trillions, secondary. Even completely jacking with the economy, secondary. Even stirring up unnecessary disputes between citizens, secondary. Passing massive legislation against the will of the people, secondary.
That little walk in Aaron's shoes was all wrong because the whole time I knew had the first black president been Republican then none of these statements would apply. It'd be open season, he'd be required to be twice as great, not half as great and buttressed with excuses.
Hank Aaron, I suggest you burn your letters, but I know you cannot do that. Smithsonian will take great interest in those bleak things. Maybe Smithsonian can label their placard explaining the contents as well as they do their Egyptian exhibit. They can take your word for it: "Early career hate letters to Hank Aaron from Republicans."
24 comments:
Yes, it is time to put the desire for revenge to rest.
Long past time, in fact.
But, that isn't happening, and that's a shame.
I remember when he was Henry Aaron.
I guess you're not black anymore unless you're a racist.
and that is sad.
Excellent post. I kinda understand where Aaron is coming from, but you're right, nursing a grievance for 50 or 60 years isn't healthy. Having said that, there must be millions of older adults still getting revenge for how they were treated in high school.
What was in your dad's tin box?
Excellent post. It deserves publication in a newspaper or magazine.
That my boy, is a home run of a post!
Obama described that as bitter clinging... I guess he didn't mean people of color.
Hank Aaron, nice guy, but never impressed me. If you look at his Hr/percentage its less than about 10 people who played during his career. He was just a very good HR hitter who just outlasted everyone & was lucky to stay healthy.
But at least he wasn't juiced.
"When I actually have the ball I never do know who best to throw to because players are moving and rule One keep your eye on the ball. So conflicting focus right there."
Ha. I just throw it to 1st Base, they're used to catching it, that's all they do all game.
I'm with Haz @ 8:04, dammed excellent post. I'm packing for a trip but will try sending Insty a link.
Where's R&B, would love to see the maneuvering he'd use to counter, maybe even that C guy too.
Another great post Chip by the way.
You are the Roger Maris of this blog.
I was going to say that maybe he was going a little senile... but he is only 80.
When does senility start?
You are the Roger Maris of this blog.
He really is.
Beautiful, Chip.
Grudges and resentment are bitter acids that destroy the bearing vessel.
I'm with the others who've said this is a home run post.
So much in it I have to re-read it to be sure I don't miss anything.
Great post with a Zen aftertaste......I've nursed my share of grudges. I can't really knock Aaron for doing the same. Still it was a time for celebration, not grievance airing.....There are people on earth with sadder stories than Hank Aaron. I'd rather suffer racism than Lou Gehrig's disease.
Chip, our very own Renaissance Man...GREAT stream-of-consciousness writing toward the end..
Thanks for sharing the story about your dad. The only thing I could think to write last night was,
Teach your parents well, their children's hell will slowly go by.
-CSNY
So many regrets. When my son was little, kissing a boom-boom was magical. The crying stopped immediately.
As far as Aaron, I'll bet a ton of black people were embarrassed. Here was a man held in adulation by millions of whites, and yet he focused on the pain. I can only hope it was due to hardening of the arteries clouding his judgement. But then, any number of people could have persuaded him to tone it down.
I concur - Excellent post.
Obviously a great post. As usual.
But I'm still not quite able to figure out how letters from 40 years ago prove that things haven't changed.
Hank should provide a side-by-side comparison of a random sample of his hate mail and a random sample of National Review articles about Obamacare, with a full textual analysis.
I'm sure that would be illuminating to many, especially Aaron.
"It must be racism. What else could it be? The question answers itself. There is only that one simple pure perfect answer. It occurs to mind immediately."
In a country that practiced some of the most brutal forms of racism - for most of it's history, including as it fought Hitler and whatnot - but now has cut back, simply because of law enforcement, blacks can trust whites know better than we do how much they've changed.
So I'm wrong. Hank Aaron's wrong. Obama's wrong. Oprah's wrong. The 97% of blacks who won't vote with you are wrong. Everyone who said The Republican Party has a race problem it needs to deal with, after the Romney loss, are wrong.The English director Steve McQueen is wrong,...
In a word, yes.
Do you want to argue heat to mind? You do. I don't.
The contents of your heart are rejected. They make for piss-poor policy.
Sorry to see Mr. Aaron go down that road.
But I will always admire him for his home run record all the same.
My dad and I were at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati when he tied the record.
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