The Dodgers literally diversified major league baseball when they signed World War II veteran and UCLA legend Jackie Robinson in 1947. They further diversified baseball with Sandy Koufax, an extraordinary Jewish southpaw pitcher, who is considered the best Dodger hurler in the team’s history. They signed Fernando Valenzuela in 1980 and Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Park, Japanese and South Korean players, in the 1990s. One of the first gay players, Glenn Burke was a Dodger.
Now, the franchise isn’t perfect, as the club directly benefited from the displacement of Mexican families in Chavez Ravine in the 1950s and General Manager Al Campanis made racist comments about African Americans in the 1980s. Still, the Dodgers have been doing DEI work for decades. So why did they visit the White House and President Trump, who is attacking all DEI policies? The Defense Department even briefly erased Jackie Robinson from its websites!
The Dodgers are a complex, highly lucrative business operation. Many businesses have recently stopped doing DEI work, generating protests and opposition. The Dodgers used to represent the “little guys” versus the Yankees. They were the bums. The team’s history is interconnected with those on the margins. They should not visit the White House because to do so means they support what the president is doing. But that’s not who the Dodgers are. The Dodgers bleed Dodger blue and stand up for those who have pushed America to stand up to its founding ideals.
While African-American superstar Mookie Betts visited the White House with his boys on April 7, he may come to regret this decision much as Jackie Robinson did after endorsing Richard Nixon for president in 1960. Nixon later became infamous for many things, including launching the so-called War on Crime that led to the mass incarceration of Chicano and African-American men in prisons across the nation. Nixon also regularly relied on racist dog whistles that appealed to white working-class voters, much like Presidents Reagan and Bush did in the 1980s and ’90s.
In marked contrast, President Trump no longer relies on subtle overtures — he uses a megaphone (and X, Truth Social, etc.) for everyone to hear his openly racist and sexist messages. It’s a shame that the Dodgers, by visiting the White House, turned their backs on their rich history as a franchise that often sought stood for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Sadly, far too many powerful corporations and people are practicing “anticipatory obedience.” They should have skipped the visit and continued the proud tradition of boycotting institutions and people that are aligned with the wrong side of history.
Jorge Castillo is a doctoral candidate and Ralph Armbruster Sandoval is a professor in the UC Santa Barbara Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies.
