This guy right here, the one with “I am Darren Wilson” taped onto the back of his Cardinals jersey—an homage to the Ferguson, Mo., police officer who shot an unarmed teenager named Mike Brown to death in August—was at the Cardinals game last night. He, along with many other Cardinals fans, clashed with a small group of protesters who want to see Wilson prosecuted. The guy in the Darren Wilson jersey wasn’t even the worst part.
I’ve long objected to the popular fiction that the St. Louis Cardinals have the best fans in baseball. I love their new ballpark; New Busch Stadium is a great place to watch a game. Beyond that, the experience is like any of the other numerous major league stadiums I’ve been fortunate enough to visit. The fans are no more or less knowledgable, polite, or enjoyable than those in Cleveland, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, etc, etc. The baseball media has seemingly forever spread the canard that Cardinals fans are some of the best in the game. Like anyplace else, there are good fans and bad fans. In the case of Cardinals fans, when they’re bad, they’re really bad- like insensitive racist asshole bad.
The reprehensibly racist display from the National League Divisional Playoff Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers should be enough to disabuse America of the “best baseball fans in America” myth. A reasonable person might have expected, given that Ferguson, MO, is a suburb of St. Louis, that fans (at least the White ones) would have been cognizant of and sympathetic to the struggles of their African-American neighbors. After all, here in the 21st century, the era of “Live and Let Live,” peace and racial harmony should be the order of the day. Right?
Yeah, about that…the video doesn’t lie, y’all:
We start off with a bang. At about the 22-second mark, an old white Cardinals fan begins telling the protesters—all of whom appear to be black—that they need to get jobs. He looks right in the camera, proudly, and says, “That’s right! If they’d be working, we wouldn’t have this problem!”
At about the 1:30 mark, the crowd of Cardinals fans begin drowning out the protesters’ chants with a “Let’s go Cardinals!” chant. Well, they could be saying worse things[.]
At the 2:40 mark, they start saying much worse things. The “Let’s go Cardinals!” chant has turned into a “Let’s go Darren!” chant. Cool.
At 8:10 one of the Cardinals fans calls one of the protesters a “crack head” and tells him he needs to go see a dentist….
At 9:05 one of the Cardinals fans starts telling one of the protesters that if he ever “saw him in the street” he would “look at the ground.” They argue for a bit about who would and would not whip whose ass.
At about 10:25 a small blonde lady starts yelling at the protesters: “We’re the ones who gave all y’all the freedoms that you have!”
At about 12:14 an older female Cardinals fan begins telling the man holding the camera, who claims he is a former Marine, that she doesn’t believe he is a veteran. The conversation does not go well for her.
At 14:54, the Cardinals fans start in on a very loud “USA! USA! USA!” chant.
At 16:07, another Cardinals fan begins yelling at the protesters, telling them that they need to get jobs.
At 16:43, a female Cardinals fan begins chanting “Africa! Africa! Africa!” at the protesters.
At 17:10, a Cardinals fans tells the protesters that they need to remove their hats and pull up their pants.
If a police force is representative of its community, it’s not hard to understand why the Ferguson and St. Louis police departments seem to see African-Americans as targets. No, these fans don’t represent the majority of Cardinals fans, but that this happened at all is representative of the sickness that allows Whites to see themselves as better and more worthy than their African-American.
I’m not sure what it is that provides these fans with the license to make light of the unjustifiable killing of an African-American teenager. How they can support the White police officer responsible for the shooting only serves to pour salt in the wounds of those who loved Mike Brown. Regardless of whatever his past may (or may not) have been, his life shouldn’t have ended in the way it did…and it’s beginning to seem as if Darren Wilson, the police officer responsible, may evade justice. Consider for a moment if Wilson had been African-American and Michael Brown had been White. I think you know how this would have played out, right? Cue the lynch mobs….
St. Louis should be ashamed of these fans…though I’ve not heard or read any condemnation of their actions. In this case, it can be argued that silence equals acceptance and agreement. Silence is condoning offensive, racist behavior…because they agree with it.
The best fans in baseball? Only if you like your racism and insensitivity to be celebrated openly and without reservation.
