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“What is it about your people that make you so incredibly lazy?”This was the question out of the mouth of my blond-haired Team USA teammate in the Goodwill Games in North Jersey in 1987, when I was 16 years old. Representing our country, we were playing Japan, hosting their players in a cultural exchange (one player stayed at my house for the week). Yet the guy wearing Team USA across his chest, just like me, asked me this question jovially, as if he was asking my favorite color.I wondered what to make of it. In baseball, the opponent is in the other dugout. They wear different uniforms, color schemes, symbols. In these international affairs, it is more than the uniforms — a clash of cultures, with different traditions, approaches, beliefs. In the Goodwill Games, the idea is that despite these differences, we come together through respect and an open mind to learn from each other, with the game as our bridge, our common language.So how it is that the guy wearing the same uniform as me now seems like as much of an opponent as the players in the other dugout?It was an early rendition of the discussion we have today, about who has the right to be somewhere, and how that connects with race in America. The second-class citizenship that plagues disenfranchised groups of people, who understand the emotional fallout of being questioned so flippantly. Sometimes these interrogations come from an exchange of words; in the more extreme cases, they come through a police response, called in because of this fundamental question:Should you exist where I don’t think you should exist?Jackie Robinson is one of our country’s most recognizable firsts. When he crossed Major League Baseball’s color line, his presence integrated an American institution, even before our military took these same steps. And being first, especially in a way that is intrinsically tied to one’s identity, comes with a host of challenges.It is often rightfully stated by many current and former Major League baseball players who identify as African-American or of color that we would not have had the opportunity to play this game, in this league, without Jackie Robinson. He opened the door and the rest of us followed.What set Robinson apart, and others who break down identity-based barriers, was that Robinson’s mere presence was a revolution on its own merit. Standing in a place where he was not allowed to be, because of what he looked like, was an act of activism even before he could utter a word about political will or systemic racism in an attempt to advance a more inclusive society.Those who came behind him built on his stiff resolve, directly and indirectly. We became seconds, thirds, fourths, until we began to speak in percentages. I finished my career with the league around 10 percent African American (significantly lower than it was in the late 1970s), a number that, according to the league’s latest calculations, is down to around 8 percent today. And despite my experience with racism, I did not face the extreme and consistent challenges Robinson faced, where sanctioned violence and death threats were lurking around the corner.I had a luxury that Robinson did not have: I could have baseball days at the stadium that involved only baseball concerns, like figuring out how to hit someone’s curveball. I might have to do it with a sore hamstring; Robinson had to do it while taking on in-your-face systematic oppression and wondering if he would make it to the parking lot safely. Quite a difference.Something often gets lost, though, when we look at pioneers. Because someone became the first, some of us attribute that moment with wholesale and immediate change for all — the watershed myth. In this case, that Robinson integrated baseball, and therefore every place in the country softened its position on segregation immediately. In reality, some circles doubled down against integration; some communities, to this day, still find plenty of ways to exclude.We often nostalgically attribute all change to one action, declaring it as the time when the worst of our segregated past fell off, when society led a progressive march towards equality. Robinson’s debut was undoubtedly a powerful catalyst — and his work off-the-field, and after his career, is often underestimated. But it has been far from a clean and consistent downhill path since April 15, 1947.This two steps forward and one, sometimes two steps back, came as no surprise to Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow, who has taken the torch, with their daughter Sharon, to continue the legacy. When I interviewed her in Cuba in 2016, she framed the diplomatic effort abroad with the challenge domestically to embrace a diverse society. “It’s important to make this change work, and not just have it as a day of celebration, and then we go back to the old ways,” said Rachel.This is why we cannot forget that even as I broke into the majors, nearly 50 years after Robinson, there were still plenty of firsts taking place, and when I retired, in 2005, we were still counting from zero in significant aspects of power in the game of baseball. In Jackie Robinson’s last public speech in Cincinnati, during the 1972 World Series, he said, “I am extremely proud and pleased to be here this afternoon, but I must admit I would be tremendously more pleased and proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball.”If he were around today, 47 years after that statement, he would see one African American field manager, and might then amend his final thought to express his hopes for more than the minimal representation amongst general managers and owners in baseball.To MLB’s credit, they can point to some successes in other areas. The number of Latino field managers has grown since the beginning of the 2018 season with the addition of world champion Alex Cora, Charlie Montoyo and Dave Martinez. They have worked to create new programs to tap the talent pool of diversity in many other professions that support the game and its organizations, from vendors to administrators to internships. These steps could plant seeds of eventual future ownership and leadership. But right now, the numbers in the positions of high power reflect homogeneity, even if unintended. It does not have to be nefarious to be true.If you ask any African American professional baseball player, from 18 to 95 years old, we find that they were pioneers somewhere, sometime. It could have been in a Little League in North Carolina; it could have been Dick Allen, a decade after Robinson, becoming the first African American to play for Little Rock’s minor league team, causing him to live in fear of how easily fans in left field could reach him when he played defense. On opening day, the White Citizens’ Council led a march with racist signage in protest of Allen, a sign of what he would endure throughout the entire 1963 season. I had my own measurable “first,” by being the first African American Ivy League graduate to make it to the major leagues, although I certainly dare not compare this to Allen or Robinson — in fact, I did not even know I was the first until, 10 years later, Cubs coach Will Venable became the second.Racial inclusion and acceptance is not a linear progression. It is geographically specific, politically dependent, legally argued, economically framed. It has a way of needing to be revisited, even re-constructed, in order to advance. If you travel extensively, as a ballplayer does, you learn this lesson very quickly. Pioneers are all around us, some fighting the same kinds of battles as Robinson fought. In baseball, but also on school boards, town councils, housing authorities, bail reform commissions and neighborhood associations, if you can even access these kinds of power.Eventually, over time, the players who came after Robinson developed more bandwidth to speak about issues of race, not just about race itself. I did not have to talk about my blackness being some kind of UFO in the locker room, or to the fans. It was not novel that I was a baseball player with black skin, even as race was deeply connected to my experience in America. Slowly, because of Robinson, others could address deeper goals for race in America. That was the privilege I inherited from Robinson — the hardest conversation had already happened, even if the conversation remained difficult, and if, at times, it seemed we were still having a Kindergarten conversation about how to share your blocks.Although Robinson’s arrival is an inspiration for many beyond the game — and he spent the years after his playing career trying to codify laws to forge an integrated world, and to build black wealth and self-empowerment — there is no true map in how to navigate the complexities of race and our institutions. Even Jackie Robinson could not fully provide a map for his own children. When they were enrolled in Stamford, Conn. public schools, his kids were firsts. They integrated the school system, and when I spoke to Sharon Robinson about it, she explained “When my father integrated baseball, our parents really did not discuss it with us. But simultaneously, we were living in an all-white neighborhood. It was confusing at times. I felt this pulling away from my world, yet not sure where I should be.”“We integrated our school system in Stamford, Connecticut. My brothers and I. No one took time out to really think about what that was like. We were looking at what was happening in the South with dogs sent on people and water hoses, so I found that I internalized my individual pain to focus on the larger pain.”Navigating the walk of a pioneer is not straightforward, even in Jackie Robinson’s family.Our country’s relationship to race continues to change — granting more acceptance in some arenas, while in other cases, perniciously reshaping itself, so that 70 years after Jackie Robinson broke in, we still are having new firsts or still asking questions of people who look like Jackie, about their right to be somewhere while doing simple, routine tasks. (Three that come to mind from my own experience: shoveling my driveway, getting a taxi, learning how to drive a stick shift.)Robinson started the conversation of belonging with an exclamation point. It was the power to own the space you occupy, something that seems like a basic right, but which is not distributed, respected or granted equally in our country. We are still seeing moments when this basic right comes with qualifiers around “earning” your space or “deserving” to be where you are at a given moment. Not to mention the ease with which privilege can challenge you in these moments.It is slow work. It takes significant experience to build confidence with one’s identity, and race brings its own unique and particularly difficult weight. It makes me think back to that question from my 16-year-old teammate. To learn, you must ask questions, even if it comes from a place of privilege and racialized assumptions. Maybe this was his first. First exposure in an intimate setting to a child of color, where baseball became the opportunity for him to rethink his assumptions.Robinson’s baseball life was inundated with the constant questions around his right, and the rights of others of color, to even be there. He had to answer this question ad nauseam, first with his silence, then with his bat, later with his activism.I don’t know what happened to the player who asked me that question after that tournament. Maybe his mind changed when I helped win a decisive game as the starting pitcher at West Point. Maybe he saw my hustle and decided we weren’t all lazy. I learned in that series that the Goodwill Games is also an exercise for Americans to improve how they treat each other, not just those from other countries.That was 1987. It was an early reminder that change cannot just be on Jackie Robinson’s shoulders, or those of anyone who is brave enough to be first. Their moment, their year, even their decade cannot change circumstances in perpetuity. We all have work to do.