Basketball and Race

I played pickup basketball for about 35 years and whenever I begin to describe the experience to anyone else, I find myself deciding that I can't talk about basketball without talking about race.

To most white people it's taboo when I mention this. They are understandably afraid that I'm going to insult or somehow degrade someone. That's a common reaction to the introduction of the topic of race.

But most anyone who knows me would agree that I'm not a bigot or a racist. I certainly don't think white folks are better than blacks.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that simply being white makes a man a racist. I can understand the logic and I guess it comes down to semantics. A racist may be a person who is blind to or ignorant of the experiences of another race.

As an example, I've never been followed around in a store by the manager who thought I was going to steal something simply because of the color of my skin. I've never seen people roll up their car windows and lock their doors while I crossed the street where they waited at an intersection. I've never been instructed--as some of my black acquaintances have--by my parents that if I ever find myself alone in a room with a white woman, then get out immediately.

I've heard of these things happening to black males my own age over the years but it's never happened to me. And although it may seem more silly than racist, it is the long-term nature of these and similar experiences that has the greatest effect. The feeling of mistrust is sown well before a young man knows to look for it. And soon he begins to accept that a lot of whites don't trust him and that he ought not to trust them.

Never having lived through these and similar things every day of my life, one could argue makes me ignorant of the African American experience and therefore, a racist.

Call me what you will, I am still very thankful that 25 years of playing ball has exposed me to a culture that the vast majority of my white counterparts have never seen. You could call me a cultural voyeur in that sense, I guess but I think if you talk to anyone who knows me even quite casually, they'd probably tell you that I'm open-minded, kind and impartial.

So with that I'd like to take some time documenting my experiences playing basketball. These brief snippets might include idiosyncrasies of the game itself, the informal rules and understandings around protocol. But they will also include comments on the cultural divide between whites and blacks, between athletes and non-athletes, language use and other quirks of the pickup circuit.