I share the above tweet not to exaggerate the importance of Ryan Spaeder’s Twitter account, which is one of those sports feeds that farms engagement by posting dozens of Fun Facts and then slips in one right-wing rant. But whenever something like the Jarren Duran controversy happens — the Red Sox outfielder was suspended this week for two games as punishment for yelling a homophobic slur at a fan — you see versions of this argument. And I think it represents a real window into capitalistic thinking.
To put this worldview in more charitable and coherent terms than the above tweet, whenever there’s a controversy like this Duran thing, I hear some version of this argument:
It is hypocritical and unfair to punish people for expressing views that, while perhaps impolite or even offensive, are nonetheless widely held. The way to overcome homophobia, or prejudice of any kind, is not to police the words of people who get caught saying what so many people say behind closed doors; it’s to change people’s minds by privately persuading them not to hold those views in the first place.
When conservatives say this stuff, it can come across as apologia for offensive statements, but progressives share this obsession with hearts and minds. You can see this in the insistence by some that Duran not just apologize but mean it.
The idea that what is in Duran’s heart matters more than what he says is what I mean when I say this is “capitalistic thinking.” It is a myopically individualistic view of the problem that prioritizes personal opinions over material actions or behavior.
It is also, to be clear, completely backwards. You don’t fix material problems by changing hearts minds; you change hearts and minds by fixing material problems. In this case, you don’t get people to stop saying slurs by magically erasing homophobia from locker rooms — you fix homophobia by punishing people for saying and doing homophobic things.1 You can quibble with the proportionality of the punishment (although two games seems fair to me, fwiw, and is in line with the MLB precedent), but the idea that Duran shouldn’t be punished because other players might use slurs in private is idiotic.
I would remind you that the idea that professional athletes are all secretly raving bigots, and until we solve this problem we can’t make progress on any other, is an idea that goes back many decades. When I wrote about the desegregation of baseball back in 2021, I pointed out that owners frequently insisted they couldn’t desegregate because their players (and fans) were too racist to go along with integration.
And there WERE white players who had problems playing with Black athletes — but they mostly got over it. The real obstacles came from teams refusing to sign players in the first place.
In a similar vein, I’m sure there are some players who do use homophobic slurs in private and secretly grumble about how silly it is that the woke mob won’t let them say anything anymore. But they’ll get over it, and making it clear that such words are unwelcome on a baseball field is important to making sure gay fans and players do feel welcome.
Earlier this summer, I wrote about why there have been so few gay male athletes, even after all the changes in people’s attitudes towards gay rights in the last couple decades.
And while I didn’t have a good answer, it certainly suggests that material improvements don’t just magically follow the winning of hearts and minds. You have to just fix things and hope people’s hearts and minds catch up later…
There is, I suppose, an argument that no player should ever be punished for things they say on the field, no matter how offensive. I haven’t actually seen anyone make this argument, and given the number of things players can say that lead to punishment, I don’t think anyone really believes it.