Jackie Robinson West, the all-Black team from Chicago’s South Side, rose to the nation’s highest peak, winning the US Little League Championship Game and reaching the final of the 2014 Little League World Series.
The Jackie Robinson West boys are champions of their own right and will remain champions, no matter who desires to mar their success.
Only their success unsettled some adults, one white man in particular, Chris Janes, who perhaps thought that the self-esteem of little white kids would be ruined by their humiliating defeat by a group of Black kids.
Chris Janes is the vice president of a less than mediocre Evergreen Park Athletic Association.
After his baseball team was utterly demolished by Jackie Robinson West in a 43-2 rout in only four innings, Janes made it his mission to go after the Jackie Robinson West boys anyway that he could.
He made it his personal vendetta to try to disqualify the Jackie Robinson West team. According to Janes, “We went through public records, voter registration, vehicle registration.”
Janes was looking for a way to annul his defeat, a way to tell his little white kids that they were better than Black kids. When they obviously were outmatched.
For Chris Janes and his team, nothing can erase the memory of an obliterating 43-2 defeat.
In the same way that nothing can erase Jackie Robinson West’s victory at the US Little League Championships and trip to the finals of the Little League World Series.
Those scores are real. Those memories are priceless.
The players from Jackie Robinson West even visited the White House to meet President Obama.
Those kids played their hearts out.
And they won. A lot.
These experiences will undoubtedly be formative ones as they transition to adolescence and ultimately manhood.
After their impressive season, the nagging question that lingers is: why would Chris Janes invest so much of his energies in arousing doubt about the success of Black children?
Their talents are evident. By any measure, they are All Stars.
Yet there is something terribly awry about an adult man who finds pleasure in assuming the role of a private investigator on young Black children.
Had Janes been a Catholic priest, would observers be more circumspect about his obsession with little boys?
Chris Janes’s peculiar behavior is actually a common pattern exhibited in the actions of white racists.
Those whites who are racists, whether in the closet or out in the open, have an abnormal desire to see the downfall of Black people.
Their actions could be characterized as white paraphilia. They engage in dangerous or extreme activities on Black people in the hopes of provoking their demise.
Nothing about Chris Janes’s pursuit of the Jackie Robinson West boys signals a love of baseball. No, Chris Janes loves something else; he finds intense pleasure in attempting to cause harm to Black people.
His love for dragging Black people in the mud is a sadistic sickness, though not one that is a stranger to white people and their history in America.
This is the same sadistic sickness that enjoyed slavery for 400 years and, at present, gets its fix on mass incarceration in the War on Drugs.
This is also the same sadistic sickness that thrives upon attacking Black men, women, boys, and girls in the media.
When Black people succeed, some whites and their media scavenge the “newsroom” for a scandal to concoct.
Suddenly, when Bill Cosby wants to buy a major network, women pop up from out of the woodworks to suggest his behavior is unconscionable and unworthy of such a possession.
When there is a white media scandal about Black men, women, boys, or girls, we must ask: what is the motive in concocting the story? What success are whites trying to undermine?
How many successful stories about Black people make media headlines compared to how many stories of Black scandal with which we are bombarded?
Why is America far more concerned with Black kids in Little League, when there are real scandals like the rigged game of professional Bellicheats?
White paraphilia may try to diminish Black greatness, but it cannot succeed.
As true science has proven, Black has always absorbed the starkest heat and endured relentlessly.
The Jackie Robinson West team won at the grandest stage for its age group. Team after team they faced lost and retreated home with their tails between their legs.
We can replay their games with assorted combinations of Jackie Robinson West players picked at random from a hat, and they would still trounce their opponents, maybe 50-0 the second time around.
What else is there to say? They are hard-working kids and winners upon that.
Nice! Well said Ms. X!
Yeah, only a white person would go though that much to discredit Black people – only a white man. They are as hideous as they come – enjoying the suffering of others! This word you use – paraphilia – perhaps captures the harmful sentiment about Black people even much more than racism.
Who ever, whatever, can beat Blacks, I think white people are in general just happy – it is paraphilia.
You are right Afiya. Let’s call a spade a spade – whites in this country have enjoyed Black suffering. Slavery, Mass Incarceration, they enjoy it. I have to agree, it is paraphilia.
When you teach yourself, for three hundred years that you are better than others, and then you begin to realize, that Blacks are actually more talented than you, the Chinese are better if not equals, the Russians, who the like to call the Mongols, are better if not equals, then I think your world for 300 years is turned upside down. It is a devastating realization. And that would make anyone nervous.
But the way in this country, the white masses enjoy the cop killing of Black men, the media lambasting of Blacks, etc. on top of a history of slavery and mass incarceration, I am in agreement with you, it is paraphilia!
White America will always be the saddest and most satanic story to tell about world history! The human rights abuses and civil rights abuses by white Americans is unparalleled anywhere in human history.
It is exactly because of white paraphilia that’s why the experiment that is integration failed! Integration has failed just as capitalism has failed. Black people will be better off segregating into their own communities and being the own cops, lawyers, judges, senators and congress people. Simple.
Jackie Robinson West made all white kids look bad. Very bad! And for that, the white institution after a third investigation decided the pressure was just too much on their poor little white untalented kids. That’s the story.
Discrediting the talent of Black boys doesn’t make their kids better. I don’t know if they know that.
Sour losers! They really went through public records, voter registration, vehicle registration? God forgive these people. It’s sad to watch their racist nerves fail them.
No matter what happens a bunch of little Black boys from Chicago manhandled untalented white kids 43 – 2. The game had to be stopped. The manhandling was too much to bear. The humiliation of any white supremacist was too hard to bear. This is it.
The fact is, no amount of saying three Black kids lived across the street from the rest can erase the fact – Black kids are just better than their kids. That is the truth they wish to wish away. In the end, whatever it is that white people are planning again to destroy the African American population here in the US, the fact will still remain, we have always been, and still are, and will always be better! I would thing real human would like to challenge that on a level playing field? No. It seems what white people know how to do more than anyone else is to cheat, cheat and cheat. Come to the fight with a gun. Poison our food. Clandestinely launch a war on Black people and call it a war on drugs while the CIA drops barrels of drugs into Black neighborhoods. It is the tactic of cheating and unfair play that has gotten them this far. I just wish real humans would like to strive for fairness. Just a thought!
Parahilia describes a white man’s abnormal love for young Black boys in this situation. It is true. It is what liberals do – they say the love Black people and you have to cringe. It’s like an alter boy in the Catholic church hearing a Priest who molests him daily talk about love from the alter. It’s a frightening understanding of what goes on in this country.
I am not surprised that these Black kids were stripped of their title. Not surprised. I knew the white people will be on to something. I knew it. They don’t surprise me with their dirty tricks and racism – I have seen it for more than 4 centuries! They are appalling.
Tom Brady and Belichick cheat their way to 4 super bowls, but it’s okay! Three Black kids are accused of cheating to one little league final, it is not okay! It is America and the white paraphilia for Black people is real.
— The story of white men cheats in America is the norm. Didn’t you know that? Look at Wall Street!
Black are better at sports! Is there a debate? Perhaps at anything else too? You wonna try? That will be good for everybody!
I don’t know about that but lets give it a shot! Lets have 12 percent at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Upenn, Columbia, Duke etc. Lets do that. It’s the right thing. Let’s level the playing field. Let’s do it. Let us honor our ideals for God’s sakes.