Basketball Colors

I had an interesting experience today. Jo, her sisters and I were playing in the park with two children of a family friend. The young boy and I went and shit some hoops on the nearby basketball court. We had a good time. The little snot can trash talk. He told me that my favorite basketball player, Kobe Bryant, sucks and that Steph Curry  was better. He also likes Ronaldo in soccer. We had a disagreement because I'm a Messi fan. It was all in good fun. He even invited me to his birthday party (just so I can buy him Ray Ban glasses of course).

All of a sudden he stopped and sat down on the ball. He looks up at me and sighs, "I like your hair." Now my hair is a mess at this point. I usually style it in a side pomoadour, but it's never as full and thick as I want it because I have a mix of straight, wavy, and curly hair, not to mention it is fine hair too.  So I tell the kid that I like his hair too.  The boy had a short curly high top with a grown in fade. He just shook his head at me and said "I don't like my hair." At this point alarm bells are ringing in my head. Why doesn't this little black boy like his hair?  I'm thinking to myself that black people hair is so unique and that they can have many different styles that caucasian hair can't . What is not to like? So I squat down next to him and ask him, "why don't you like your hair?" He replies " because I can never have a mohawk! " I laugh a little and reassure the lad that he indeed can have a mohawk with his hair and it will just be a slightly different style than a regular mohawk. It doesn't make it any less cool. Well, after that the boy immediately told me about how he wants dreadlocks. I just laughed along with him and asked him what he likes about dreadlocks as we headed back to the park to play.

I should have known from that conversation that the world was trying to show me something today. In hindsight I can remember every person on that court. There were 6 hoops and each hoop had a group of kids around it with ages anywhere from 13 to 17. One group was all Asians, other  groups  were a mix of black and Indian kids and so on. I was the only white guy on th court. And I was wearing my 1988 Chicago Bulls Michael Jordan Replica Jersey.

As we were walking back to the park I heard a group of kids talking about the jersey and how "sick" it was. I have always been a big jersey collector since basketball dominated most of my time as a teen and in my early 20s. I use to get the jerseys of my favorite players. I got multiple Kob jerseys,  two Vince Carters, two Larry Birds, and my one Michael Jordan jersey.

Now to anyone growing up on  a diet of late 90s and early 2000s basketball, Jordan was the end all be all. As an athlete he was unmatched. I always admired him for his feirece competitive drive, his ability to play through injury and the way he accepted responsibility as the leader for his team's​ failures and celebrated their triumphs. After that, Kobe came along and as he grew, I grew up with him. He became my GOAT (Greatest of All Time). He had everything Jordan had that made him dominant and then some ( Google the Mamba Mentality and everything that entails if you don't already know what it is). What was even better is that I got to watch him grow as a player and a person during my own formative years. He became my role model for everything I ever wanted to be on the basketball court.

As I grew older I realized those same skills and mental edges translated into the real world as I slowly transitioned away from playing basketball on a serious level. That is why I still wear those jerseys today. They are a personification of all the qualities I admire in the individuals whose name reside on the back. The team names on the front also hold a special meaning to me. Teams like the Lakers​, the Celtics and the Bulls personified excellence, winning, championship mentality and hard work in the basketball world, and they still do to this day.

About half an hour goes by in the park and we are all having a good time, when a new group of kids show up on the basketball courts. They're more on the older side of 16 and 17.  We are getting ready to all leave and go to dinner when the little boy I was playing basketball with earlier yells that he forgot his sweater by the basketball hoop. Being older I volunteer to go and get it. As I am cutting through the court I can hear these new group of kids laughing. They make no pretense of hiding it. Thinking nothing of it, I go and grab the hoodie and turn to walk back the way I came. Walking back to the park I notice that these kids are laughing harder and looking right at me. I then hear them say "Jordan? Haha really? Who does he think he is? He is white. He shouldn't even be wearing that. He can't be Jordan. He's white! He doesn't even look like he can even ball!"

Now being a grown ass man it would be morally and legally wrong for me to smack these kids out, not to mention a potential hate crime because all of these kids were black. I can't lie and say I wasn't tempted though. My entire youth I had been hearing a lot of the same shit, that is until I stepped on the basketball court and showed that I could actually play and play competitively. That whole exchange just triggered all those old memories as well as all the times I heard that I was too short, or to scrawny, or too fat to ever play basketball seriously.

Now I am sure someone out there is going to say "well now you know how people of a minority feel when they are systematically discriminated against in the community, at their jobs, and by the law." On that point I will just say this, yes racism and discrimination against people of any other color but white is a very real and ongoing problem. I'm not taking that away from you. I respect your struggle and the bullshit you have to put up with where a person with my skin color might not have to and the fact that a lot of people persevere and go on to do great things and be great members of their communities, businesses and political parties.  The thing I want ya'll to think about is this, what does skin color really tell you about a person, let alone the clothes they are "allowed" to wear or even what genre of music they listen to? Growing up playing basketball had its own set of adversities but it also brought me a lot of friendships with people from all races and backgrounds. When I played all that mattered was the game and whether you could show up and play. That got you respect. Clothes and skin color didn't mean shit.

Those kids that set me off today didn't really know a lot about me or where I come from to make that kind of call. Just because I'm white they probably assumed I had no skill on the basketball court. They might even assume that I had an easy time growing up because I am white. They don't know that I am an immigrant to multiple countries. They didn't know that I had to learn English and that it's my third language. They didn't know that my family and I were illegal immigrants living in Greece when I was a kid. They didn't know the struggles that come with coming to a new country and trying to survive day to day when your parents have no education and barley speak the native language. They weren't there for the 4 a.m. paper routes with my parents in the dead of winter and then attending school afterwards. They weren't there when we were sleeping on a mattress on the floor in a small apartment and moved around from place to place for years. They weren't there when we were eating jam sandwiches or beans out of a can and I figured that's what  everyone ate. They weren't there when switching schools every few years because of the moves from place to place was like a regular part of life and I didn't know that things weren't like that for a lot of kids. I don't know if they have ever lived as low income to almost poverty line in their households for years, but I have. As a grown man I can appreciate these struggles so much more than when I was in them because now I know better. I can't even be mad at those kids for being they way they are, because they don't know.

As we left the park I could still hear their laughter and jeers ringing in my ears and a great feeling of sadness and anger came over me. I wasn't really mad at them for acting that way. I'm mad that we as human beings still perpetuate the fact that we are not one people. Yes there are differences between cultures and communities. We all bleed the same though. We breath the same air, we feel the same feelings, and we all shit too. Our racial differences are the result of genetic adaptation to our ancient environments and we act like they actually mean anything at all as to who we are as individuals when they don't mean shit. I got sad because the basketball clothes I wear and even the rap music I listen to are just a product of how and where I grew up. I respect all people for the sake of being human beings until their actions and character prove them unworthy of that respect. I got sad because the world is moving backwards into times where skin color is a problem. I don't see much hope for the future of man kind if we continue on this path. That shit makes me sad and what's worse I feel like it will never change.

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