Represent

 

When one belongs to an oppressed and marginalized people engaged in a struggle for civil rights and social equality, it tends to change the meaning of one’s moments of public achievement: those moments are transformed from merely personal accomplishments to accomplishments of one’s people; one is up there onstage (literally or figuratively) not just as an individual, but as a representative of one’s people, both in the eyes of that people and in the eyes of other peoples (including the people whose paradigms dominate the local society and create the conditions under which one’s own people are oppressed and marginalized).

The greater the degree to which one’s people are oppressed and marginalized, and the fewer of one’s people are recognized in the public eye as outstanding individuals, the more extreme this phenomenon and the greater the responsibility placed upon one – whether one wants that responsibility or not. As the first African-American Major League baseball player of the modern age, for instance, Jackie Robinson was going to be treated as an ambassador of his people and a living symbol, was going to have his life and career viewed as representative of the potential of his people, was going to be looked to by the next generation of his people as a model of what they could expect, hope for, and aspire to in life – even if he had had no interest in any of that stuff and just wanted to play some baseball.

One does, of course, have a choice about how one handles that sort of responsibility, how one rises to the occasion. The tides of politics, change, life, and circumstance may put one in a position to be a hero of and for one’s people, but how one plays that position always remains a personal choice, and regardless of what others project onto one and regardless of the support or opposition one receives from others, heroism always comes down to what one finds within oneself at the most crucial moments. By my reckoning, at least, what made Jackie Robinson a hero was not his being a good baseball player (I have no interest in spectator sports, and I am disgusted to live in a society where merely being skilled at such sports is mistaken for heroism or moral virtue) or his position as the first African-American Major League player of the modern age (he wasn’t trying to get into the Major League; the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers had decided to start recruiting top Black players and sent his scouts out looking for them). What made him a hero was how he chose to use his position to benefit his people – not just passively, by holding the position and being darned good at it, but actively, by speaking out on civil rights, by getting involved with the NAACP, and by teaching himself to master his fiery temper in the face of racist abuse so that he would be a better role model and so that he would win the sympathy of large segments of the White public. His most famous statement of principle, printed on the back of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to him posthumously in 2003, could serve as a motto for all who have risen to the opportunity for heroism and for service to their community on any scale: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”