Saying Hey To Willie, From A Distance

ROME WAS NEITHER BUILT NOR DID IT FALL in a day. It did not simply fall, and vanish. Rather, it declined and evolved into another form of civilization by gradual degrees, over time. Today it still exists, in the form of the Italian nation state, which in its modern form only emerged from its existence as a collection of feudal kingdoms, like Germany, late in the nineteenth century. Not only are people immortal, made so by the effects of their actions, as Goethe astutely said, but so are nations and civilizations. Nor did the instituion of African-American slavery simply vanish on June nineteenth, 1865, when a Union warship landed at Galveston,Texas, liberaed the remaining formally enslaved African-Americans,and proclaimed to them that Abraham Lincoln had long since issued the "Emancipation Proclamation", formally ending formal slavery in these United States. Slavery did not simply vanish on that single day. Rahter, it evolved into another form, it still exists and is still evolving. Reconstruction ended twelve years later, in 1877, and the reenslavement of the former slaves proceeded, under different names. It has been called "segregation", "apartheid", discrimination, and "redlining" among other ingominious desingations. Willie Mays was born in the deep deeply segregated south in 1931, and was immediately enslaved, for all intents and purposes,by a culture which regarded him, by law, custom, and societal attitude, as sub human,second class, inferior. Second class,inferior, only on account of his skin color, having nothing to do with either the content of his character or the quality of his talents and attributes. He was relegated to separation in schoorooms, restrooms, at water fountains, hotels, restaurants, and in private homes, early in life, and throughout his long distinguished life. Enslaved by his own ountry, by the strict limitations of opportunity and acces imposed upon him and his fellow African-Americans by the dominant white culture, and its core American value; racism. Willie was not a crusading activist for racial justice like Jackie Robinson. He prefered to lead by example,to show the world what anyone can accomplish, given enough talent, and enough opportunity. Had Willie Mays been green, red, or purple, any baseball team in the world would have written his name on the line up card. Leo Durocher said the same thing about Jackie Robinson, when he suggested his willingness to trade any of Jackie's white Dodger teammates who preferred not to take the field along side a black man. Like Jackie before him, Willie Mays took the insults, the segregation, the discrimination, and the death threat with good grace and calm and without loud complaint, setting a perfect example for Martin Luther King. And like Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, and all the other African-Amercans who have ever lived in these disunited States of America with its core value of racism, Willie Mays labored under the oppression of cultural ensalvement, the enslavnent of spending his entire life in a culture and a country which diminshed his true worth only because of the color of his skn, choosing to overlook or downplay his character and talents. Willie Mays was a thoughtful, intelligent man, who understood every aspect of the game of baseball,and who would have made an excellent major league manager or general manager. But only because of the color of his skin he never had a chance. Again,enslavement, by a society blinded by color. And anyone who labors under the illusion that any of this has fundamentally changed in the modern year of twenty twenty four, had better take another look, assuming that such willfully blind people are even capable of honest self examination in the first place.