How Jackie Robinson Desegregated America

FIFTY years ago, on April 18, 1946, Jackie Robinson broke organized baseball’s color barrier with a characteristic bang, homering and scoring four runs in his historic first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ top farm team. This anniversary will no doubt unleash a wave of media meditations, since it combines the two national pastimes of the American male intellectual: denouncing racism and waxing nostalgic over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Spike Lee is preparing The Jackie Robinson Saga, and I’m sure Stephen Jay Gould will favor us with his thoughts.

Yet, beyond the obvious platitudes, baseball’s long struggle over race can yield some surprising perspectives on our national predicament. The Robinson epic is generally lumped in with the 1954 Brown decision against segregated public schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing job discrimination. Yet two crucial differences stand out. 1) The integration of organized baseball preceded, the civilrights revolution, and in reality baseball helped make later reforms politically feasible by giving white Americans black heroes with whom to identify. 2) Government had almost nothing to do with this triumph of the competitive market. Baseball owners finally realized that the more they cared about the color of people’s money, the less they could afford to care about the color of their skin.

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Steve Sailer

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FIFTY years ago, on April 18, 1946, Jackie Robinson broke organized baseball’s color barrier with a characteristic bang, homering and scoring four runs in his historic first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ top farm team. This anniversary will no doubt unleash a wave of media meditations, since it combines the two national pastimes of the American male intellectual: denouncing racism and waxing nostalgic over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Spike Lee is preparing The Jackie Robinson Saga, and I’m sure Stephen Jay Gould will favor us with his thoughts.

Yet, beyond the obvious platitudes, baseball’s long struggle over race can yield some surprising perspectives on our national predicament. The Robinson epic is generally lumped in with the 1954 Brown decision against segregated public schools and the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing job discrimination. Yet two crucial differences stand out. 1) The integration of organized baseball preceded, the civilrights revolution, and in reality baseball helped make later reforms politically feasible by giving white Americans black heroes with whom to identify. 2) Government had almost nothing to do with this triumph of the competitive market. Baseball owners finally realized that the more they cared about the color of people’s money, the less they could afford to care about the color of their skin.