The Chris Moeller Archives

Virtue signaling in professional sports

There continues to be no effective backlash among the citizenry against the emboldened outrage culture and liberal self-destructiveness that plague our national public culture. In the cross-hairs of new conformism today is the memory of a former middle-brow, 200-pound female radio singer who has been dead for 33 years.

Baseball’s New York Yankees, and on their heels, hockey’s Philadelphia Flyers, have both decided to stop playing Kate Smith’s famous recording of “God Bless America” before their home contests because of new attention to the old facts that Smith also recorded-- during her early career-- a pair of racially-insensitive songs-- “That’s Why Darkies Were Born” and “Pickaninny Heaven.” The Flyers-- because they had made the odd decision once of putting up a statue of Smith outside their arena-- have also removed said statue from its location. Smith can go into the proverbial trash bin of history for those who had not already effectively put her there.

I’ve decided that the sum of this pair of corporate decisions ranges somewhere on the spectrum between extremely short-sided and fucking stupid. The first of the two referenced songs was written as a satire, and was performed also by Paul Robeson, an African-American so committed to the cause of equal rights for his people during his life that he joined the Communist Party when it was considered treasonous to do so. In the latter song, presented by Smith in a 1933 film, she sings it on celluloid for “a lot of little colored children, who are listening in at an orphanage in New York City.” Both tunes were routinely performed by both black and white singers prior to World War II.

We can’t really count on the Yankees or Flyers, a pair of professional teams that, by my count, have one African-American player on their current rosters between them, to make nuanced decisions when it comes to racial sensitivity and historical context. They’re reacting from a business standpoint as safely as they can in the face of a political movement that offers anachronistic contemporary agendas that distort history, literature, and art. It costs these organizations nothing to do this.

An email from a single disgruntled fan reportedly led to the Yankees making their decision. To pick on the team that is the more historically and culturally important of the two, it might surprise the Yankees to know that Frank Sinatra, the equally-deceased performer of their celebratory “New York, New York,” blared over the stadium sound system after each home win, appeared in black face in the 1935 Major Bowes short film The Big Minstrel. You likely won’t see the "New York, New York" tradition end-- Jesus, I hope not-- as Sinatra is a beloved city institution in the Big Apple, whereas Smith was a Southerner-- and in respect to her already-fading memory today, disposable.

The Yankees and Flyers are acting as individual entities, with no actual concern for the wave of precedent they're participating in, but if they feel they have effectively put out the fire of outrage, they should know they are actually encouraging it to continue and to re-target. It used to be the radical right, huddled in church basements, that would obsessively scour the details of entertainment culture and make their value accusations known, now it’s the arrogant left. According to a recent poll in The Atlantic, though, 80 percent of Americans believe “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even 79 percent of those under the age of 24 agreed with that statement, and three quarters of African-Americans. It's consistent non-support, and across the board.

The Yankees were one of the very last MLB teams to field a black player. Integration didn’t take place for them until 1955, one season before Jackie Robinson retired. The Flyers didn’t have a black player on the ice until 1974. Are they racist teams today because of their racist pasts? Clearly they'd rather have us thinking about this good will gesture and not about that. Today they are allies in the battle to stamp out bruised feelings.

posted by CM @ 5:49 PM