Torii Hunter and Culture

Torii Hunter has reopened the invective-filled discussion of race and sports, but I do not want to take him to task for his ham-fisted remarks. I want to go to what prompted them in the first place.

I want to go the heart of the issue: the myth of the African-American.

Torii Hunter thinks he's an African-American. Good for him. It sez so right here that I could drop him in Egypt or Morocco and he would find out very quickly that he is as American as McDonald's. He's never lived in Africa. I doubt that he's ever been to Africa, and if he has, he didn't stay very long. He doesn't speak an African language. He doesn't wear clothes native to any particular indigenous African culture. By what standard can he claim a continent in an entirely different hemisphere that did not form inform his upbringing, his views of the world, or food, or music, or film?

I believe that Hunter's insistence upon an authentic African-Americanism stems directly from the fact that a man must be called something. One of the bastard children of the lie that is race is the schism that yet exists between the dark-skinned descendants of New World slavery, and the lighter skinned descendants of those who profited directly and indirectly from it. First by law, then by society, dark-skinned people were denied (or have refused) entry into the culture at large, even though that culture was all they had. If the first generation of African slaves could be repatriated, the idea of "repatriating" even their children was impossible because those children were no longer Ibo, or Yoruba, or any of the other peoples of the west African nations. Those children and any of their descendants in the U.S. would be irrevocably American. Yet they were denied a name.

Guerrero is recognized as Dominican, even as Aroldis Chapman is Cuban. But what about Hunter and the millions of dark-skinned people living in the U.S. during and since slavery?

Forced together by circumstance, with only a history of misery to unite them, in search of an identity, dark-skinned Americans went through a succession of inappropriate monikers: Negro, Colored, Afro-American, Black, African-American, and, of course, the dreaded N-word.

Properly understood, these labels and the baggage they carry were the reasons for the actions of men like Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They were not fighting for Black people, Colored people, or Negro people. They were fighting for people, period. They were not seeking any other affirmation than to be simply recognized as American, due the same basic rights and respect as any other American.

And there is the real truth. Americans are not defined by a particular look, but by an idea, that God created all of us equally. One person is not better than another simply because of his appearance. We should not be judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.

Torii Hunter is not an authentic African-American. He is simply an American. If he knew this, he would never have insisted upon a qualitative difference between himself and Vladimir Guerrero that does not exist in fact. He would not make remarks that suggest that Guerrero or other dark-skinned Latinos are somehow stealing something that does not belong to them. He would acknowledge Guerrero's culture, even as he would rightly consider himself a son of the United States.