By Sean Proctor

May 3, 2009

Jazz, baseball and the Constitution. They are uniquely American. And they have all been adapted, loved even, by the world. They are, I should say, our gifts to the world.

So often am I lost in the darkness of my mind grappling with, wrestling with, trying to make sense of the moon’s tears shedding over our world, I never thought about America’s gifts to the world.

And as much as I would like to say that one night as I lay awakened by the dark for its daytime nightmares, I had an epiphany and was briefly allowed to flee my darkened chambers of cynicism for a moment of optimism, and America’s good gift was my own idea, I regrettably cannot. I’m not that bright.

I suppose that’s why I am here though, right? To expand my mind?
And so it was in  Ron Wiginton’s class actually where I learned of America’s good gifts: jazz, baseball, and the Constitution.

Jazz, suffice it to say, is a skoo-be-dew-bop-de-dop-bop good time.

It’s a uniquely American invention that speaks the universal language.
And what is that universal language?

It’s rhythm and pitch comprised of some B flats and A sharps, a few broken skats mixed with rests on the staff, repeats, fermatas, eighth notes and whole notes.

I’m talkin’ music baby. Love. Music and love: that’s the universal language.

And America, with its improv to jazz, offered it to the world.
Jazz, you see, created an out for the outcasts of our society.

As abolitionists and slaves rebelled against the established structure, musicians rebelled against the same—both politically and musically. To hell with the structure of the white European music—America wanted something new, it needed it.

Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Rollins, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ella and Dinah and of course Louis Armstrong on the horn—America’s band -- were the black musicians who played for both black and white crowds. South American crowds. Crowds in London and crowds in Sweden. And crowds in Japan too.

Now Japan has won the only two World Baseball Classics thus far. South Korea won the gold medal in baseball at the 2008 Olympics. And Japan won the gold for softball.

People come from all over the world to play baseball in the Majors.

Indeed, the manager of my beloved White Sox is from Venezuela.

Though let the record be clear, baseball is a uniquely American sport. It’s America’s favorite pastime, right?

And just as jazz positively impacted civil rights in America, so too did baseball.

Now up until the 1940s America had two different baseball leagues—there were the Majors and then there was the Negro League.

They were, you know, separate, but equal…and all that jazz. I’ll say it one last time—good riddance!

But before the Supreme Court deemed separate but equal to be unconstitutional, baseball took that step.

It integrated on April 15, 1947 when number 42, Jackie Robinson, became the first Negro to play in the majors when he took second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Majors were ready for more, because unlike the law and the South, it realized, like jazz did, that the color of our skin doesn’t define us.

A good black ballplayer is just as good as a good white ballplayer. And both are just as good as a good Hispanic ballplayer.

My White Sox understood the concept too as they produced the first Hispanic All-Stars: Chico Carrasquel and Minnie Minoso.

And then of course the Pittsburgh Pirates graced the world with the great Roberto Clemente.

Though the sport began in America, it welcomed players from all around the world. And then the sport left its borders and spread around the world quicker than the swine flu.

And then there is the Constitution. The supreme law of the land. The evolving document that came to ensure the rights of man.

Now to offer my candidness, I’m not as sure of this gift as I am the former two, but I can see why it may be considered as such.

With its Bill of Rights, its granted freedoms, its 27 progressive Amendments, the Constitution set a path for eventual human rights.

IGOs like the UN’s Charter has imitated it in form and in content, and the UN Declaration of Human Rights has likewise done the same.

As democracies have been born over the centuries, they have mimicked our Constitution—its Preamble, its Articles, and its Amendments for guidance in their own.

Indeed, it grants the various freedoms. It wisely separates the powers of government with each branch having authority to check another.

And then it granted due process and equal protection under the law. And suffrage for all.

Indeed these rights and freedoms came before the world accepted human rights as a respectable necessity.

As America evolved, then the Constitution evolved, and then the world caught up and evolved with it.

So next time you read about how so many hate America, remember her gifts.

And I too, next time my own cynicism takes hold of me,  will go listen to some jazz record, watch a baseball game, or…read the Constitution?

Ah, yes. Ah, humanity. Ah, America!