Attempting to whitewash Jackie Robinson from history

03/19/2025 04:48 PM

The Defense Department is literally erasing its own history involving Jackie Robinson, and others.

We interrupt my delightful shenanigans while aboard in Japan to bring you some fresh horror coming out of the United States.

My original reaction to this story is unprintable in a family website. It did involve a biologically impossible suggestion to oneself and one's mode of conveyance.

My politics are fairly obvious but I do my best to follow the ""no politics" rule.

I get it; we're a baseball site, a Dodgers site. Let's talk about Ohtani hitting dingers rather than the socioeconomic disparity arising in absurd tickets prices, in which, yes, I am part of the problem.

There are other venues to describe areas of overlap. However, on rare occasions, something happens that it so egregious, to be silent about an act is to be complicit about an act.

On Tuesday, U.S. time, reporting emerged from Matthew Reichbach that the current Defense Department, in line, with the Trump Administration's posture against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, more commonly abbreviated to DEI, erased a story about famed Dodgers legend and ex-Army officer Jackie Robinson from its homepage.

In its place on Tuesday was a 404-not found message including "dei" in the web address. On Wednesday the page was restored, without "dei" in the URL.

The removed story was an innocuous retelling of Robinson's life and baseball career. The thing about the internet is that things do not just disappear because you don't like them and an archived version can be found here.

This purge affected both Army and Air Force websites, removing virtually all mention of Robinson. Other items have been removed as well including the Tuskegee Airmen, the Navajo Codebreakers, some of the Iwo Jima flag raisers, and the Enola Gay, the bomber in the atomic attack against Hiroshima.

The theme of removal is as undeniable as it is incompetent — using control-F (the search feature) is a dumb way to run a government.

We can disagree about politics and even disagree about being agreeable.

The truth is a funny thing. It doesn't care if you ignore it, deny it, replace it, because eventually with each lie, a debt is incurred. And sooner or later, that debt is paid.

That debt is always paid.

While ongoing things that this current administration is doing go well beyond the pale and are well afield of what we do here, I hope that Dodgers fan will agree with the follow sentiment:

• Damn them. You don't get to pretend entire classes of people don't exist or have never contributed to score political points.
• Robinson was an American hero and the best of us, and white supremacy masked as cowardice cannot change what he did.

Dodgers fans have a special obligation to Robinson. While his story, his heroism, his dignity, and his sacrifices belong to all baseball fans, he broke the color barrier as a Dodger.

He was the best of us. People who are not fit to carry his cleats do not get to bleat and try to erase a great man to fit a narrative of a place that does not and never existed.

Major League Baseball retired Robinson's number of 42 throughout the league, but it had been long retired in Los Angeles.

Robinson's story is ultimately our story and we are the stewards of it.

I have called out the Dodgers for screwing up in the past, most relevantly as to Glenn Burke. If we want to bask in the adulation of when the team got it right, we have the parallel obligation to make up for the times when the team got it wrong as fans.

Do better. Be kind. Don't back down.

If Robinson can be summarized more succinctly, I haven't heard it.

MLB and the Dodgers have a responsibility to publicly call out this cowardice, this shame as loudly and as soon as possible, to call out "not in our names." To do anything less is to be complicit in the whitewashing, in the perversion of both Robinson's history and its legacy. Said complicity would be unbearable, next month, with Jackie Robinson day fast approaching.

If Commissioner Rob Manfred wanted a way to change his narrative and do the right thing for a change, well, here you go.

Sadly, I am not holding my breath.

Things did not happen this way overnight. A lot of rhetorical ground had to ceded for reactionary, racist forced to even dream up something like this removal, much less do it.

Author and former lawyer Craig Calcaterra wrote about the Robinson situation at his Cup of Coffee newsletter, and his subsequent Bluesky post summarizes my feelings best, and his words serve as this essay's conclusion:

If you cannot honor an American hero like Jackie Robinson — and especially if you go out of your way to attempt to ERASE him — you are a white supremacist. That's just a simple fact.

It's high time that everyone say that in clear terms. That we call these people what they are.

Not one more inch, not here.