“Race is not real” is something I’ve heard off and on throughout the years, but never something that was really explained in great detail to me. Scott Brooks (not the coaching Scott Brooks) came and spoke to SJI about race and culture, and how it all is interconnected with sports.
Brooks’ point was that we’re all living in a world that’s put up these elaborate constructs of who we are – black, white, male, female, poor, rich. All of those terms have come to mean something, but in reality, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. The human race began in Africa, so if we’re talking evolutionarily, we’re all of African descent. But people only reach back as far back into history as they want to, choosing when is the appropriate time period to focus on, and when it’s okay to say that someone is truly of “African descent.” They forget that we all are.
“Racial” groups, or at least what we think racial groups are, have been mixing for generations and generations, and none of it matters in the end. What Brooks really hammered home was that we have the opportunity to use sports as a prism to examine these issues, and to try to erase all these social constructs that truthfully mean absolutely nothing. I think that’s one of the most important things we’ve learned so far at SJI, and it’s something I hope to do in my career moving forward.
--Ashley Scoby
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