By MSNBC loves to call things racist, especially while they get to determine who is and isn’t black. Now they’re going after America’s pastime–baseball. In a bizarre op-ed on Joy Reid’s blog, one writer attacked Major League Baseball because it is not “diverse,” warning that it reflects the dangers of “the war on DEI.”
The writer, Ja’han Jones, stated, “As Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson and his pioneering contributions to the game, I can’t help but think about the fact that the league is reporting a historically low number of Black American players in its ranks: only 6%.
I think this is a teachable moment at a time when diversity efforts across various arenas (no pun intended) have come under attack. Major League Baseball, unfortunately, is a prime example of what it looks like to talk the talk without always walking the walk.
It was, and remains, a valid question. Over the past few decades, Major League Baseball has shown what it looks like to outwardly celebrate diversity (with things like Jackie Robinson Day on April 15) while thumbing your nose at it in practice.
In recent years, we’ve seen more than one team abandon its longtime home and look to greener pastures in whiter communities. We’ve seen stubborn inequality in the management ranks. We’ve also heard Black players speak out about the racism they’ve experienced from fans at games — including home games — and about how having more Black players could combat that.”
The MSNBC argument has one problem, however: statistics. Major League Baseball has long been the most diverse major sport in the United States.
The Washington Examiner dug into the issue.
“There are a few problems with this. For one, sports are the most meritorious of any profession in the United States. Different people go into sports for different reasons, and so various leagues look far different from each other and from the general population. NFL players, who play in the most popular sports league in the country, are 53% black. Given that black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, you could say the MLB at 6% is far more representative than the NFL’s 53% or the NBA’s 73%. Oddly, Jones isn’t complaining about those numbers not representing the general population.
Worse still is that framing of “black American players,” as mentioned earlier. More than 6% of MLB players are black, but only 6% are “black Americans.” According to Jones and the university program that pulls these numbers, black Latinos simply do not count. NBC doesn’t count them either, as evidenced when NBC BLK erased several black Latinos from the narrative to say that both World Series teams in 2021 only had one black player each.
So, if you follow Jones’s logic, black Latinos are not diverse, and disproportionate skin color representation is only bad when there is a slightly lower percentage of black players in a sport and not a ridiculously high percentage of them. If that seems bad and incoherent to you, it’s because you are not a racist. Only someone who categorizes people based on skin color and whose brain has been rotted by racism and narratives of oppression would think that this “logic” makes sense.
The MLB is the only major sports league in America where Latino and Asian players have any presence at all. There are almost no Latino/Asian players in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, while the MLB regularly promotes Latino players like Guerrero Jr. and Asian players like Ohtani.
— Yang (@AxiomAmerican) April 18, 2024
While MLB may not be a reflection of “the war on DEI,” the op-ed from Jones may be a good example of why so many Latino voters have begun to abandon liberalism and the Democrats.
The New York Times recently noted that “former President Donald J. Trump’s growing support among Latino voters is threatening to upend the coalition that has delivered victories to Democrats for more than a decade, putting the politically divided group at the center of a tug of war that could determine elections across the country.
Polls show that Mr. Trump’s standing with Latino voters has grown since his defeat in 2020, with some surveys finding him winning more than 40 percent of those voters — a level not seen for a Republican in two decades. That strength has Democrats playing defense to maintain the large majority of Latino voters whom they have relied on to win in recent years.”
Biden has shown the panic from liberals who just assume they own the non-white vote (remember, if you don’t vote for Biden, “you ain’t Black.”). The Hill wrote that “when President Biden visited a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix, Ariz., last month, he begged the crowd for its support in his bid for reelection.
‘I need you badly,’ Biden told the restaurant’s patrons. ‘I need the help. You’re the reason why, in large part, I beat Donald Trump.’
The reason behind the president’s solicitation was simple: Biden’s support among Hispanics — particularly young Latino men — is lukewarm. And in some cases, polls show he is losing support among the key Democratic voting bloc. At the same time, Trump appears to be gaining support from Hispanics.
Last week, an Axios/Ipsos survey showed Biden’s support among Hispanics dropping by 12 points from 53 percent to 41 percent over the last three years. And while support for Trump is still low at 32 percent, the former president has gained about 8 points with Hispanic voters since the 2021 poll.”
It probably does not help their cause that Democrats have also begun attacking Latino Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, demanding that she retire because they fear she will die during a Trump second term.
[Read More: Ilhan Omar’s Daughter In Big Trouble]
