San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Like the trailblazers before her, Jackson making history with grace
On April 22, 1947, one week after Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in modern major league baseball, the Brooklyn Dodgers began hosting the Philadelphia Phillies for a three-game series. Throughout that first game, the Phillies, led by manager Ben Chapman, assaulted Robinson with racist bile.
Before signing Robinson, Dodgers owner Branch Rickey told Robinson he wanted him, during his rookie year, to have the courage to not fight back against the verbal and physical abuse he’d receive. Doing so would jeopardize this “noble experiment” to integrate baseball.
So Robinson listened to Chapman’s taunts and remained silent. But his teammate, Alabama-born Eddie Stanky, did not, yelling at Chapman and the Phillies, “Why don’t you guys go to work on somebody who can fight back? There isn’t one of you has the guts of a louse.”
Robinson’s temperament was to fight back, and he was more than capable of doing so — and would from 1948 on. But for one year, he had to take the abuse so he would not live down to a stereotype and deny opportunities to other players of color.
The Jackie Robinsons in life, trailblazers who look different from those who came before them, those who are the first of their ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual preference to accomplish something, are asked to be more humane than those who preceded them when treated poorly. They’re asked to serve portions of grace in exchange for slices of opportunity. When their talent is undeniable, their temperament is explored as reason to disqualify them.
Stanky’s words — “Why don’t you guys go to work on somebody who can fight back?” — came to mind while watching the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, if confirmed, would be the first Black woman on the court. They echoed while listening to the interruptions, and the bellowing soliloquies, misrepresentations and interrogations from Sens. Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley.
They weren’t there for a vigorous and respectful intellectual exchange with Jackson or to examine legitimate criticisms of her record, but to perform for those who enjoy the stylings of these Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
No, none of these senators did or said anything resembling Chapman’s treatment of Robinson. But in the manner and tone with which they addressed Jackson, they exploited and enjoyed a double standard not allowed Amy Coney Barrett during her 2020 confirmation hearings and not allowed Jackson.
That double standard is the display of anger and emotion that Brett Kavanaugh could indulge during his 2018 confirmation and that these senators deployed against Jackson. Any woman — white, Black, Latina — who behaved like Kavanaugh would have been dismissed as “hysterical” or “emotional.”
Jackson would have been seen as an “angry Black woman,” and among the lessons Black parents teach their children is the spoken and unspoken caution about showing anger.
“The angry Black man” and “angry Black woman” are centuries-old stereotypes rooted in fear and used to dismiss, condescend and demean. But the problem has never been with those deemed “angry” but with those uncomfortable with Black people if they weren’t always smiling, courteous and complying.
So, Jackson, poised and more qualified than anyone on the Senate Judiciary Committee, or any sitting justice, to serve on the Supreme Court, listened as Hawley painted her as soft on child sexual abuse even though the conservative National Review defended her and called this a “smear.”
She listened as a shrill and emotional Graham asked her about hearings and organizations with which she had no association.
She listened as Cotton said he didn’t believe her.
And she listened as Cruz bellowed about critical race theory, which has nothing to do with her work, but, hey, she’s Black.
There were times when Jackson looked as if she’d had enough and was ready to let loose, but she’d pause, collect herself and respond with another serving of grace.
And let the record show that it wasn’t the smallness of Cruz, Graham, Cotton or Hawley who brought Jackson to tears. It was the largeness of Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who, among other things, told her, “You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”
It’s Jackie Robinson we remember, not Ben Chapman.
Ketanji Brown Jackson is history. Her loud, emotional detractors are footnotes.