I’ve rooted for the Atlanta Braves since 1982; this is longer than many of you have been alive. From 1991 to 2005, the Braves won their division; this excludes 1994, a strike-shortened season, but includes a division move from the NL West to the NL East. In 1999, the Braves’ closer John Rocker played exceptionally, but he was also an asshole. This included disparaging remarks about homosexuals, immigrants, minorities, and women.
Shortly after that season, a loved one asked me point-blank. Do I agree with what John Rocker said? Absolutely not. He’s an asshole and an embarrassment to the Braves. The team traded him away in 2001. He pitched well, but he was poisonous. I’m not the general manager, but really… good riddance. Get the fuck out!
Just for reference, I take loyalty to this team seriously. I take baseball seriously. I’ve lived in the Seattle area since 1991 and have never once considered identifying with the Seattle Mariners. However, my loyalty to the Braves and my desire to see them win do not outweigh human decency. Fuck you, John Rocker!
How I grew up
My father died in 1977. From that moment on, it was just my mom, my two sisters, and me. We lived in Puerto Rico at the time, but moved to Florida after less than a year. My mom spoke Cantonese and Spanish, but never really learned English. However, she learned English well enough to pass the naturalization exam. We bought a modest house in Fort Lauderdale.
We were poor, though I didn’t realize it. We hand-washed dishes and used our dishwasher for storage. Although we had a washer, we didn’t have a dryer. Each wash, we collected our wet laundry and carefully draped it over clotheslines in our backyard, allowing the Florida sun to bake our clothes dry. If it rained, we needed to run outside to collect our clothes from the clotheslines in a hurry and pray that they were already dry.
Despite the heat often climbing into the 100s in the summer, we rarely ever turned on the air conditioner. We were told that excessive air conditioner use would lead to an obscure kind of respiratory condition. It doesn’t; we were poor. My mom held two jobs to provide for us; each child started work as early as 11, either washing dishes or busing tables.
While we endured a profoundly modest existence, we had our home. It was our one source of stability.
How times have changed
What happened to that loved one who confronted me about John Rocker? She was already well-established professionally and continued to excel. She logged many miles of travel over many years. After years together, she finally married her long-time partner. Though she would’ve done it much earlier, she couldn’t. In fact, only one thing prevented them from getting married: her (now) spouse is a woman.
In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in Lovings v. Virginia that the state may not ban mixed-race marriages. Over fifty years ago, we found the idea of black and white people getting married to be so unsettling that we forbade it. The color of your loved one’s skin was enough to deny you a marriage license. We found verses in the bible that rationalized this. Virginia despicably argued, in court, that it was within the state’s power to protect children from damage that would result from such a marriage.
Similar assertions have been made about gay marriages, with laws to limit their access to adoption and surrogacy. We would first limit their ability to get married and then to become parents because of the gender of their spouse. Let’s consider how profoundly petty this is.
The easiest way to protect these children from the dangers of mixed-race or gay marriages is to overcome your racism and homophobia. We protect them from bigots like you. We’ve used scripture to rationalize racism, homophobia, and permit slavery. Some of you may still find mixed-race couples unsettling, but you won’t speak up for fear of the label ‘racist’. You rationalize that believing people should stick with ‘their own kind’ doesn’t make you a racist.
Yes, it does. Furthermore, believing that people should only couple with someone of the opposite gender makes you a homophobe.
What about our home in Florida?
We moved into our house in Fort Lauderdale in 1978. Our life was exceptionally difficult, but we persevered. Our home was our anchor. Naturally, the mortgage was under my mom’s name. She had opened a bank account at a Landmark Bank branch a few miles down the road. It took her years to build up enough credit to get a credit card. While we conducted many transactions with cash (or check), other transactions, like renting a car, required a credit card.
Imagine if the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974 had been delayed for a few years. It would’ve meant my mom might not have a bank account, and we might not have had our house. Though we didn’t know it, we made it by the skin of our teeth. It would’ve changed our lives from merely difficult into oppressive and nearly impossible. Having our home changed everything.
Tell me again when America was ‘great’
When I hear people speak so fondly about the way things were, and they look back in history and assert that’s what they want to revert to. They have a scene from ‘Leave it to Beaver’ in their head. They imagine becoming Ward or June Cleaver. That existence is a myth; it doesn’t exist.
Was America great in 2014? …when same sex couples were unable to marry? When my loved ones were denied a marriage license because their genders did not align well with others?
Did we celebrate America’s greatness in 1973? …when my mom could not get a bank account? Or a mortgage? I think about what our life would’ve been like if we, a single mom and three children, moved every few years from renting. I can’t even imagine the logistics of paying rent without a bank account.
Did we beam with pride in 1966? …when couples were jailed because they had the temerity to marry when their skin color did not match?
Is this the America you want to revert to? The one with all these moral failings? You want to re-establish a ban on same-sex marriage. You’d deny women the ability to have a mortgage or a bank account. You would jail a husband and wife because they’re different races. Is this what you mean when you assert ‘Make America Great Again’?
We could revert one thing…
Come to think of it, there is one thing that we could revert to the way it was before 1954. That one item is the Pledge of Allegiance. The original words of the Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1945, omitted the words “under God”. Want to Make America Great Again? Let’s honor the principles of the First Amendment and allow us to practice freedom of religion, which implicitly grants us freedom not to practice religion.
Simply put, let’s remove the words “under God” from it. We recited it perfectly fine for the preceding nine years. Adding it was a knee-jerk reaction to our fear of communism, thanks to Joseph McCarthy. Can we finally outgrow our irrational fear born from over seventy years ago?
Instead, I’ll ask a better question. Does our persistence in uttering those two words stem from the fear of communism, which regularly practices atheism? Or do we continue reciting those words because we fear losing our faith? If the only thing that maintains your faith is uttering those two words in a classroom each morning, maybe your faith is already gone.
Let’s undo this one.