A chance at some frank discussion of these issues was derailed by the chilling censorship that accompanies any honest discussion of race in America
J. B. Cash
Gary Sheffield recently waded into the “not enough blacks in baseball” controversy with a series of ignorant remarks that were generally ignored. The media reticence was probably motivated by the possible repercussions of getting in the middle of a war of words between America’s two most aggrieved (and aggravating) minorities.
In an interview with GQ magazine Sheffield said:
“I called it years ago. What I called is that you’re going to see more black faces, but there ain’t no English going to be coming out… [It’s about being able to tell [Latin players what to do —- being able to control them.
“Where I’m from, you can’t control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that’s a person that you’re going to talk to with respect, you’re going to talk to like a man.
“These are the things my race demands. So, if you’re equally good as this Latin player, guess who’s going to get sent home? I know a lot of players that are home now can outplay a lot of these guys.”WHO IS GARY SHEFFIELD?
Before addressing the substance of what Sheffield says, let’s take a look at the man himself. Gary Sheffield is one of those unfortunate examples of what happens when the Good Lord puts athletic talent in the body of a truly noxious person.
Among his many shortcomings Sheffield is a pathological liar. He has been linked to the steroids scandal in a manner that would have proven career ending for any white athlete. He has backtracked on his original story and even retracted testimony he gave a grand jury.
While testifying before a federal grand jury in San Francisco in 2000, when a prosecutor held up the testosterone-based steroid known as “the cream,” supplied by BALCO, Sheffield was asked: “Do you know what this is?”
“Yeah, I do,” Sheffield said.
“What did they tell you it was for?”
“My wounds,” said Sheffield, who then rolled up his right pants leg to show a surgical scar on the outside of his knee. “It was like a cortisone to heal these wounds. I rubbed it on every night and it helped me.”
Sheffield was a good friend of another drug cheat, Barry Bonds, and Bonds turned him onto his BALCO connection, of which Sheffield availed himself to the fullest extent, which included exams, urine samples, and eventually designer steroids in the form of creams. The idea that he did not know what he was taking is ludicrous, even allowing for how stupid Sheffield really is.
And he has changed his story, at first he would only admit that he was given substances that he had no idea contained illegal steroids. For you, me, and most of the rest of the world, a claim of ignorance would be no excuse from either a court or public opinion. Yet Sheffield has largely escaped any negatives from his actions and he continues to pull in millions of dollars in salary and reaps the benefits of the public worship that is heaped upon all professional athletes.
Now he has retracted his “confession.” He says “When people sit here and say I didn’t know I took steroids — I didn’t take steroids,” he said. “The bottom line is I put rubbing cream on my leg, and if somebody says that’s steroids, that’s a bunch of hogwash.”
Sheffield is that peculiar kind of creature that is unable to discern between lies and truth, and since he never has to pay any kind of price for lying, why would it make a difference to him? Even though there is a record of testimony and evidence that he used steroids he still proclaims to all that will listen that he never did.
Compare his situation with that of Jason Giambi, his former Yankee teammate who has had to bear the brunt of the steroid controversy because he is the highest profile white athlete in baseball that can definitely be linked to steroids. Giambi, as a white player, is criticized relentlessly. Since Giambi has no race card to play he is easy pickings for the media vultures.
Giambi also admitted to a grand jury that he used creams containing steroids. Giambi however is unable to lie about it, so he has to pay the price in negative press and eventually official sanctions while Sheffield throws a wall of protection around himself by stridently denying that he ever did anything wrong. The media not wanting to “disrespect” a black man gives him a pass.
But there is much more. Sheffield is a cheater. As a player he has admitted that he would intentionally make errors while playing third base, purposely throwing the ball over the head of the first baseman. He did it to force the team to trade him. Apparently the millions he was making in Milwaukee was not enough for him so he wanted out and went about it in the manner one might expect of a child.
An admission of this type of intentional poor play should be something that would result in a player getting banned for life or at least fined or suspended. “Shoeless” Joe Jackson was kicked out of baseball forever from the 1919 Black Sox scandal for allegedly conspiring to lose the World Series. Yet Jackson made no errors and hit over .300 in the ’19 Series. Pete Rose is banned from baseball for life over allegations he bet on baseball. There has never been any insinuation that Rose acted in a manner to disadvantage his team. Yet Rose is permanently out of the game, while Sheffield, who intentionally made mistakes that effected the outcome of games, is a revered superstar.
Sheffield has also had numerous run-ins with the law. He happens to be a relative of Dwight Gooden, who has had many problems of his own, and hung around him when he was coming up through the minors. While a minor leaguer he pleaded no contest to battery and resisting arrest during an incident involving Tampa police officers. Sheffield was also jailed on charges of driving while intoxicated, eluding police, and speeding.
Sheffield has also had other well-publicized incidents which attest to his true “character”. He was the attempted victim of a blackmail tape in which someone tried to extort money from him with a videotape of Sheffield’s wife having sex with another man and another woman. He has also scuffled with a fan during a Red Sox game and he frequently changes teams as he is generally a clubhouse cancer wherever he goes.
He has also many times admitted that he does not like baseball and only plays it for the money. This is the kind of guy millions of people pay to see, thousands idolize and a magazine like GQ interviews to get their opinion on important matters of the day.
THE REAL MEANING
The little criticism Sheffield has received for his remarks has mostly focused on them being insulting to hispanics by virtue of his opinion that hispanics can be “disrespected” while American blacks cannot.
This is another example of the lack of intelligence and/or courage of the media. For there is another, much more telling meaning behind the remarks that Sheffield made.
Sheffield says:
“……, you can’t control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that’s a person that you’re going to talk to with respect, you’re going to talk to like a man.
“These are the things my race demands.”
There are only a few ways a person can acquire enough money to survive in this world. They can steal it, beg for it, or trade for it. In our world a man either gets his daily bread by taking it from another (robbery); begging for a handout (such as welfare); or trading his skill and labor for it (working). The prisons and welfare roles are full of black men that have opted for the first two methods of acquiring the necessary means of survival.
Working, which is the trading of ones labor for money, is by definition a surrender of control. A man wants you to do his work because he is unable or unwilling to do it, so he offers you money so that you will do it for him.
Thus Sheffield elucidates a fundamental flaw in the character of the black community in America and virtually no one has the guts to comment on it. Too many blacks consider work “disrespectful” and avoid it like the plague. Thus the black community suffers from high rates of unemployment and the problems that accompany joblessness.
White people approach the issue differently. Hard work is the hallmark of our culture. Productive labor is why Western society is the envy (and the target) of the rest of the world. Our rich societies were not built upon disrespect, they were built on the understanding that hard work has to be done and that is how you can get ahead — by being the one to do it, by making the sacrifice that is necessary.
And in some ways hispanics “get it” too. Many have a reputation for working. They are supposed to “do the work Americans won’t.” What that means is that they do not find any “disrespect” in working difficult jobs, doing what “the man” wants.
The fact that hispanics are willing to work where so many blacks see that work as “disrespectful” is why ignorant rich white people want to bring them into the country. They undoubtedly want those “hardworking” hispanics to replace blacks as the underclass in America.
Let it be understood though that hispanics are not especially a hard working group or else they would not have to come here, they could just build up the continent and a half they already populate. What we are seeing in America is just the “natural selection” of those members of that group that are so motivated that they would travel here to work.
BLACK VS. BROWN
Also missed in the Sheffield controversy was how his remarks should have focused attention on what is becoming a rapidly growing potential disaster in this country. That is the struggle for living space between blacks and hispanics.
The liberal media is loathe to make any non-white group identifications that are negative, hence the elephant that has been defecating in the room for some time is almost completely ignored. Yet in city after city across this country the black and hispanic communities are waging wars of attrition against each other.
This is a huge issue and it is almost completely ignored. Press and politicians are so deathly afraid of the fallout from controversy that they avoid the issue at all costs, and so it simmers away threatening to explode. It is almost guaranteed that large scale riots between blacks and hispanics will be a regular occurrence in US cities within a few years.
But high profile blacks and hispanics wish to maintain the charade as they remain dependent on white guilt for special benefits. Thus black leaders, nearly as useless to their people as white leaders, take pro illegal immigrant stances, using the long-out dated concept that anything that is anti-white is pro-black.
Meanwhile blacks and hispanics battle for turf and territory in many cities. Whites have refused to get into this struggle. They have the wherewithal and the desire to flee, and do so, stretching the suburban areas farther and farther from the non-white populations. As long as there is another lily-white suburb to run to white people will not complain. But blacks have neither the resources nor the temperament to abandon even the worst of inner city slums. This puts them in the direct path of the government permitted hispanic invasion of America.
Nowhere is this demographic shift more obvious then in California and large cities like Los Angeles. Traditionally black areas of the city such as Watts and in the city of Compton, famous as the birthplace of gangsta rap, are now majority latino
School systems that for years had been predominantly black are now predominantly hispanic and that change has led to racially motivated violence. In the last few years widespread fighting between hispanics and african americans, required the presence of the police and the lockdown of several schools in Los Angeles County.
The change can also be seen in the reporting of hate crimes. Once upon a time whites were involved in the majority of cases concerning blacks and hispanics. Now among hate crimes reported by blacks over 70 percent of the identified suspects are hispanic and in anti-latino crimes, about 80 percent of the suspects are african american, according to a report by the county Commission on Human Relations.
California prisons have been turned into a battlefield between hispanics and blacks. Racially motivated attacks between the groups have resulted in multiple deaths and brought media attention to the friction between them.
It’s not just on the baseball field that hispanics are replacing blacks. The high hispanic birth rate is having them replace blacks as the majority in schools. Hispanics are electing their own in politics so they are getting favorable treatment over blacks in government-controlled jobs and benefits. They are also pushing blacks out of the lower skilled work that many blacks depended on for their livelihood.
One would think that this level of tension between the groups would have lead to some severe criticism from hispanics concerning Sheffield’s remarks. But such was not the case. Other then some white sportswriters writing from inside the fog that surrounds clueless white media members not much criticism was heard from anybody much less any hispanic players.
If you were wondering how Gary Sheffield’s latin teammates would react to what Sheffield said in GQ? Well, how’s this?
“I’m happy he said it,” Carlos Guillen said. “It’s the truth.”
Pudge Rodriguez also said he had absolutely no problem with Sheffield, and walked across the clubhouse and put his arm around Sheffield just to prove it.
Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect millionaire ballplayers to express the anger felt by their lesser-endowed group members. But how long before the tension that is dividing American cities is felt in professional sports?
That is one of the many issues brought into light by Sheffield’s comments. Issues like the black refusal to understand the employer-employee relationship and it’s effect on the social structure in America. A chance at some frank discussion of these issues was derailed by the chilling censorship that accompanies any honest discussion of race in America.
Someday in the not too distant future blacks and hispanics will not be so publicly chummy. America may eventually be a battleground. Will white America be on the sidelines or in the middle? And will the media be brave enough to discuss those issues when tensions are even worse?
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