Originally Posted on the Previous Iteration of Baseball.FYI by Sheryl Ring
Last week, the United States was once again confronted with its long and deeply ingrained history and culture of institutional and systemic racism with the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by Minneapolus police officer Derek Chauvin. Back in March, Breonna Taylor, a Black nurse, was shot by Louisville police eight times in her own apartment. And on May 27, Tallahassee, Florida police killed Tony McDade, an openly transgender man, and then misgendered and deadnamed him in disclosing the incident. The trio of killings touched off a series of protests against police brutality across the country.
Hours after the protests began in Minneapolis, Minnesota Twins outfielder Max Kepler raised eyebrows when he posted on Instagram a picture of himself wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” mask.
The veteran Twins outfielder posted a selfie wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” flag face mask — the flag is a black-and-white American flag with one singular blue stripe in the middle and represents the 2014 countermovement to the anti-police violence Black Lives Matter organization.
Let’s be clear about what this was. Mere hours after Derek Chauvin and three other officers were fired by the Minneapolis Police Department for crushing George Floyd into the pavement with their knees for over eight minutes whilst Floyd begged for his life until he died – a killing captured on video from multiple angles – and as protesters took to the streets of Minneapolis over that horrific display, Kepler decided to post a picture of himself adorned in a message that was unironically and unambiguously supportive of Chauvin and against the protesters. In the city where Kepler works, whilst people were angered and in mourning over a killing the police department itself could not justify, Kepler sided with the killers.
The backlash to Kepler’s post was swift, which prompted this apology from Kepler.
“✌️ [peace emoji] wasn’t aware what the mask supported. still not into politics
Later, Kepler said that because police wear green in Germany, he wasn’t aware of what “Blue Lives Matter” was. But frankly, both apologies are simply insufficient.
Kepler is asking us to believe that he just happened to accidentally post a “Blue Lives Matter” mask on this particular occasion, a coincidence which would beggar belief. But even if we were to accept that profferred explanation at face value, it neither excuses nor absolves him. Kepler, despite being an immigrant, is a white man. He receives all of the benefits of white privilege in the United States. The history of racism – and that it remains embedded firmly in American culture – is not esoteric. Kepler was born in Germany, but his mother is from San Antonio, Texas, and he spent significant time in the United States growing up. Kepler himself has lived in the United States since 2015. In other words, Kepler is hardly unfamiliar with the vagaries of American society, or with what color uniforms police wear.
This presents the same problem as his comment that he is “still not into politics.” Being apolitical is the refuge of the privileged, for only people whose lives are unaffected by politics have the ability to stay out of the political fray. Consider: as a white, cisgender, straight male with significant financial assets – Kepler is currently signed to a five-year, $35 million contract – Kepler is highly unlikely to encounter violence from police. On the other hand, studies have shown that police use of force remains a leading cause of death for Black men in the United States. The man Kepler replaced in right field for Minnesota, Torii Hunter, was once held at gunpoint by police in his own home; the authorities thought that Hunter, a Black man, was an intruder in his own house. “Still not into politics” is, therefore, Kepler saying that he is “not into” voicing an opinion regarding whether Black men should be killed by police, which is the epitome of white privilege.
This is an example of what the law calls “willful blindness” – a “conscious avoidance” of the truth. Kepler may have been oblivious to the true meaning of the mask, but only because he chose to be. His “not into politics” comment is another example, a conscious avoidance of the issue of racism. But although Kepler’s instagram post may have been a particularly odious example of it, his is hardly unique. All white people – myself included – engage in this sort of conscious disregard of the existence of racism, or how it impacts the lives of people of color. Kepler’s post merely exemplified this trait.
So what is it that Kepler should do? The same thing we all should do. At the very least, we owe the people of color in our community enough respect to at least be casually aware of what their daily struggle is. Not knowing what Black people experience at the hands of law enforcement is, at this point, a willful refusal to engage with or accept reality. When enough of us make the same choice as Kepler, the result is what happened to Floyd, for a refusal to take a side in a dispute is always a tacit agreement or acquiescence to the side with more power – and in this case, that’s the police. If you think racism and its victims are a political issue from which you intend to abstain, you have already chosen a side. That’s what Kepler did. When his city needed him the most, he sided with a killer.