The cruel theft and senseless destruction of the Jackie Robinson statue from a public park in our city’s predominantly Black neighborhood is bigger than a criminal act or even a potential hate crime that generates national news.
It’s bigger too, than the well-intentioned youth baseball league for which the statue was crafted.
It offers all of us a new opportunity to revisit the larger community discussion about representation, about the distribution of resources to Wichita communities, and who gets to make those decisions.
We’ve gotten representation from Brandon Johnson, from Lavonta Williams, from the late Carl Brewer and a host of others, but watching this incident and the coverage afterwards left me feeling like those of us in central northeast Wichita deserve more.
It might surprise you that more than a few of us who live near McAdams Park really aren’t heartbroken about the theft and destruction of the statue.
We had very little to do with it or the youth baseball league.
No one is celebrating, but we aren’t crying, either.