Wit and Wisdom: Prejudiced But Didn’t Know It; Part II

Nodding, I held up my small bag containing tennis shoes, shorts and t-shirt.

Coach Gibson called role, five brief instructions as to his expectations for the year and then dismissed everyone to change clothes.

Like a lemming I followed the other boys into the locker room. Wooden benches, with names and initials crudely etched in them, sat in front of wooden lockers without doors. Everyone started stripping down to get dressed up in their gym clothes. There was the typical laughing, joking and making fun of each other that boys engage in, though I was only an observer.

Looking around for a locker where I could change, I turned a corner and was stunned by what I saw.

In front of a locker was a Black boy, close to my age and size, changing his clothes. A Black boy! In my locker room!

As I stared at him, he stopped and looked at me without expression. After a pause and an audible sniff, he continued changing clothes.

Sitting down hard on the bench, my mind reeled. Much of my previous life I had lived in Alabama. The Deep South. Home to Governor George Wallace. I used public toilets that were for “whites only.” I avoided the water fountains that were for “colored only.”

The N-word was used as casually as breathing when referring to Blacks. Dehumanizing jokes were as common across elementary school yards as rocks on a gravel road.

Spellbound, I had watched the news on TV as water hoses tore the clothes off colored people’s backs. I even felt a sense of pride when Governor Wallace, flanked by soldiers, stood defiantly in a schoolhouse door to block the entrance of a Black student. “Nobody tells him what to do,” I thought.

I knew there were schools for Blacks, but I never saw one, never gave it any thought. What did they have to do with me?

Yet, in the home I grew up in, the N-word was never uttered, and other people were not made fun of. My parents taught us that everyone was equal, and prejudice was an offense to God. Therefore, the juxtaposition of the prejudiced world I faced every day and the non-judgmental world I lived in at home created dissonance within me.

Friends that I enjoyed playing with, and their parents in whose homes I ate and spent the night, were obviously highly prejudiced against anyone who wasn’t white. But my parents, who I loved and respected, held a firm line against that kind of attitude.

At fifteen years of age, I bought into what my parents taught me and was certain I was a compassionate person who believed everyone should be treated equally. If you’d accused me of being prejudiced back then, I’d have staunchly and confidently denied it.

But standing in that gym locker room, three hundred and fifty miles and several cultural divides from the Apartheid-like world I spent my childhood in, I experienced feelings I didn’t believe lived in my heart.

“Why am I offended by this Black boy being in the locker room with me?” I asked myself. “Why do I feel like he shouldn’t be here? Why am I so uncomfortable?”

I was embarrassed and confused by how I felt.

It was obvious none of the other white guys seemed to even notice the boy quietly lacing his Converse high-top tennis shoes. When he finishes dressing, he took a puff on an inhaler, something I knew a little bit about as both my brothers had asthma. I remembered the times I was terrified by their gasping, wheezing sounds as they desperately scrambled to find their inhaler.

Looking again at the Black boy, I felt a bow pull across a small, sympathetic string in my heart.

Everyone filed out of the locker room as I quickly shed my street clothes and put on my gym clothes.

Hurrying out the door, I joined everyone on the gym floor.

The shriek of Coach Gibson’s whistle shattered my confused thoughts.

“Okay boys, let’s divide up and play some basketball.” Without consulting a class roster, he quickly called the names of ten boys and divided them into two teams.

The rest of us took a seat on the bleachers to watch.

The two teams raced up and down the court with practiced speed and agility. They banked shots, dropped in layups, blocked shots, and executed fast breaks with precision.

Glancing around, I noticed the Black boy sitting by himself like me and watching with an air of indifference. I thought about the similarities between us and felt a tug at the corner of my conscience as a little light filtered into my heart.

“I wonder if he feels like I do, like an outsider.”

Coach’s whistle hooked me by the ear and jerked me out of my ruminating.

“Give me ten more boys.” He looked at his roll book and barked out ten names, including mine.

As I passed the boys who had been playing, I noticed them gasping for air and the sheen of sweat covering them. But what I noticed the most was their smiles and laughter, their connection to each other.

When Coach divided us into two teams, I suddenly realized the Black boy was on my team. A feeling of uncertainty filled me as opposing feelings bumped into each other.

Having played basketball in Alabama and intending to try out for the team, I was eager to impress Coach Gibson.

He handed the ball to the Black boy, and said, “Here, Eugene.”

I suddenly felt connected to Eugene, because he was the only boy on the floor whose name I knew.

Pointing at me, Coach told Eugene, “Throw the ball in to Johnson and let’s get going!”

Eugene’s stoic features shifted, and a wide, infectious grin took its place. Tossing the ball to me and then running past me, he said, “Let’s go Johnson.”

For the next fifteen minutes I ran up and down the court, exchanging passes with Eugene and the others. With each pass between me and him, the differences in us melted away. I shouted words of encouragement to him. He smiled and laughed with me when we assisted one another in scoring.

My first time playing with a Black person.

The third portion of Prejudiced But Didn’t Know It will continue next week.

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume III: A Harrowing Halloween Tale