Thursday, May 04, 2017

"The Baltimore Orioles COO has had enough of racism at the ballpark and enough of a society that is breeding more and more hate."

Fenway Park sure isn't unique in this regard, although Boston's franchise in the American League has struggled mightily to exorcise a few past ghosts (it was the last to integrate, in 1959).

‘We Must Actively Stand Up’: John Angelos’s Response to Racism at Fenway Park, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

The Baltimore Orioles COO has had enough of racism at the ballpark and enough of a society that is breeding more and more hate.

On Monday night, a large group of “fans” at Boston’s Fenway Park called Baltimore Orioles All-Star outfielder Adam Jones a n—– from the outfield seats, and one threw a bag of peanuts at him. The incident has provoked widespread uproar. Here is an exclusive comment about the incident from Baltimore Orioles COO John Angelos. People may remember Angelos from his intensely just and political response to the killing of Freddie Gray while Gray was in police custody in 2015. The below needs to be read and reread.

For what it is worth and since you asked, and speaking as one man and for myself here, my thoughts on incidents of this sad and tragic kind, and what they represent today are the following:

It is a tragic reflection of the sickness that today afflicts aspects of our society that we are reminded seemingly every day now of the demented hatreds, prejudices, and biases expressed in certain circles of our community around race, sex, national origin, ethnicity, religious following, sexual orientation, and other coincidences of birth and of living life. The increasing frequency with which these individual incidents spew forth into our public domain and the increasing number of newly formed hate groups that echo these individual episodes and their themes strongly suggests the rise of an increasingly militant and unrestrained sect of our citizenry emboldened in expressing publicly their private contempt for our neighbors, friends, and family members ...

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