Quote:
Originally Posted by BigBrodieFan
I have been talking about this with my 14 year old for awhile since it came up in another thread. I think I agree with you.
My reasoning is this- My son plays on a basketball team that's coached by a black male, probably mid 30s I'd say. His team has 10 players, 7 black, 1 Russian, and 2 white kids. My son is very tall for just turning 14, 6'3 and he weighs 205. Last night he scored 16 points and one of the kids said 'Not too bad for a white guy.' This isn't the first time he's been razzed for being 'a white guy' and I am sure it won't be the last. They call him cracker/whitey and all kinds of other names, and his coach does it too. I really never even thought about it before, just sort of laughed along. But- I was thinking of this situation in hockey and I asked my son last night what he would have done in the same situation. He said 'Mom, they are just stupid words by stupid kids. The main thing is, we win the game. No way I'd want to stop playing over some stupid comment or name calling.'
Now, mind you, he's been brought up in Mid-Western America, not Canada. Racial issues here are just so different than I remember in Canada.
Just some comments from another perspective. I am not saying the coach was wrong- but I think that pulling the team was probably not the best way to handle the situation.
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Things aren't that different in Canada. Playing high school basketball in Ontario, our high school teams were pretty much all white. Our school division had some of the best teams in Canada, which happened to be all black. We got slaughtered pretty much every game. Playing away games, the 'whitey' and 'cracker' comments were par for the course. Nobody packed up their stuff and went home though, because the comments were chalked up to a few ignorant idiots. If folks packed it in after every ignorant or disrespectful comment in a competitive event, a majority of the games wouldn't get finished.