THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Blinded by the white
This may seem almost impossible, but...
I’ve never really had to confront racism up close.
With the world — and sports’ little corner of it — watching the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and reacting with outrage, I admit that I’m a bit of an outsider.
Being singled out by police or civilian bullies because of skin color not only has skipped over me, I haven’t even SEEN it face to face.
How can that be?
How is it possible when I’ve been a sports journalist for decades, and moved routinely among blacks, Hispanics and so many others from cultures that are not my own?
Oh, I’ve heard stories from athletes — tales of being called ugly names in small towns, or even uglier names for failing to hold that long pass in a crucial situation.
But it’s all been second-hand stuff.
So, how on Earth have I missed the worst of it, right in front of me on a personal level?
OH, SURE, I know intellectually that players I’ve covered — many who have ultimately become close friends — far too often were (and are) treated like second-class citizens.
But as for seeing the worst of it with my own eyes?
No.
The simplest explanation is that I am white.
Therefore, racist fans have no incentive to throw bananas at me.
Just being white makes you pretty close to bullet-proof in a racist world, so the best you can do is look at the evidence and search in your own heart about what it means for all of us — regardless of color or language or anything else.
Anyone who says that there is no such thing as “white entitlement” either isn’t looking or is intentionally denying reality.
There is an irony in my case, though.
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where color and gender and politics were almost ignored.
You were what you were, and somehow no one paid any attention.
I had a black roommate in my college dorm, and the only people who even seemed to notice were a few of my parents’ friends.
To my folks’ credit, anyone who had a problem with me sharing a room with “that black guy” was no longer a friend of the family.
The phrase “color-blind” is overused, but my mom was born in Egypt and raised in Scotland — while my dad was forced to pay his way through accounting school by shooting pool on the streets of San Francisco.
They truly WERE color-blind, and that’s how my sister and I were raised.
FROM AN adolescence in the Bay Area (at a time of almost universal acceptance) to adulthood moving without notice through locker rooms, clubhouses and hotel lobbies with athletes of all colors...
In all those years, I suppose I only thought about racism — the true reality of it — for one stretch, when I covered an NHL team coached by the cruelly misogynistic Don Cherry.
Even Cherry, though, was more small-minded about being Canadian than the matter of being white. I suspect he’d have grabbed former Edmonton goalie Grant Fuhr — a black Canadian — in a heartbeat.
Cherry seemed simply to hate Russians, Swedes and various Europeans who dared to sully Canada’s national sport.
But actual black-and-white racism?
I’m in the very unusual position of knowing damn well that it exists, and that this country will not live up to the words of our national anthem until we white people understand and confront it.
My own role, however, is limited by skin color to completely supporting my countrymen of every background.
And yes...
To condemn the idea that anyone should be tear-gassed for standing in the street and stating the obvious fact that George Floyd — like so many others before him — was murdered for no reason.
Even to a white boy in a multi-colored world...
That much is obvious.
Email: scameron@cdapress.com
Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. “Moments, Memories and Madness,” his reminiscences from several decades as a sports journalist, runs each Sunday.
Steve also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball, once per month during the offseason.