No us-born black baseball players in World Series for 1st time since 1950

malarko wrote:

Not Fast Anymore wrote:

In the 60s and 70s Roberto Clemente would have been considered "black"

Now, he would be considered "latino"

You are completely correct. Certainly, he would have been banned in the color line era -- there are plenty of instances where light-skinned Latinos were allowed in while dark-skinned Latinos had to play in the Negro Leagues.

The average person who gets conspiratorial about identity stuff probably wouldn't call Clemente "African-American" today either, even though he was a Puerto Rican so I don't see how the title doesn't fit him. The people who obsess over identity are, by definition, categorical thinkers, so it's vital to remember what categories are and aren't, that they have as much power as we want them to have and no more, and that they shift over time based on changing social perceptions and choices by the influential about what to emphasize. Part of why Clemente would be classed as "Latino" now is the massive increase in the "Latino" population in America since the 1960s. Latinos have more of a presence, both literally and in the American mind, so that created a shift in how we look at demographic categories and where we put people when we decide we have to put people in a category for one reason or another. I guess it's too bad my team lost triple-digit games instead of making the World Series. We've got some African Americans! Though it's interesting to consider how many more you'd think we had if you only looked at the team photo and didn't learn everyone's name or talk to them and hear some Spanish-language accents.

I would take this info about the first World Series with no African-Americans as a trivia-type stat, whereas many will want to take it as indicative of a problem with baseball that anyone but themselves should be expected to solve immediately. It's certainly interesting to me that black Americans seem to be less interested in playing baseball now than when I was young, and I suspect any bumbling attempt to state a reason for that is likely to slip close to racist thinking pretty quickly -- see the poster upthread who reached for "you need a dad to play catch with." Woof! I also have found it interesting to see the increased interest in baseball and presence in the majors of people from Latin America over my lifetime. I don't think the decreased percentage of black guys or the increased percentage of Latin guys is indicative of anything more dire than happenstance, but your average identitarian would obviously disagree. That's part and parcel of being obsessed with identity though.