The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police in May brought the issues of racism in America to the fore again and home to Houston, where Floyd had grown up and played football and basketball at Yates.
Floyd’s death, Breonna Taylor’s killing in Louisville, the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin and other incidents drove protests, strikes and discussion, often led by the nation’s athletes.
As 2020 ends, the Chronicle offers experiences on being Black in America from area sports figures.
In their own words:
Calvin Murphy
When I came here, Houston was a little different. I lived in the area of Long Point. I had gotten a new Vette. Rudy and I were our riding around, and we were stopped for no reason. They made me get out of the car and go to the back of the car, hands on the hood. And they asked Rudy all the questions about whose care it was, which was blatant racism. Of course, Rudy explained it was my car. Their attitude was what was I doing with it, what was I doing in that area. It was very blatant. That was my indoctrination to the City of Houston.
I was arrested one time for not having a license plate in the front of my car. I was coming down right past TSU. I had a little, white Toyota. I tried to explain to him I didn’t know it was against the law to not have a license plate on the front of the car and the kids in the neighborhood knew who I was and would take souvenirs. They would take my license plate. He treated me like I just robbed a convenience store. He put me against the car, handcuffed me, took me down to police headquarters, paraded me around before he put me in a cell. All over not have a license plate in the front of the car. That’s bull … That leaves a bad taste in your mouth. He was able to do it, so he did it.
I can tell you a thousand things about good relationships I’ve had with police officers in the City of Houston and the things they have done to help me in the community. This is about individuals and their beliefs about certain things. Unfortunately, it’s gotten out of hand. This is what’s going on. But it didn’t just start yesterday.
It’s happened so much and for so long, we became immune to it until recently when it became a situation with social media shedding light on it. It’s a sad thing when something happens so much you become immune to it. I can come up with a bunch of (examples), but you want to forget about what happens to you until it hits you in the face.
When I was a sophomore at Niagara, I was the only Black on campus. You would think I would see a lot of racism. Never saw it. I started the first Black student union. We had the first Black arts festival. They had me spoiled. They treated me like I was Barack Obama. I walked out of there with lasting relationships. When I left the university and came out to the world, then I saw what the world really was.
My mother grew up in the South. She’s from North Carolina and she told me about the blatant racism she saw growing up as a young girl. Her mother and father warned her about going into certain places. I had relatives in South Carolina. I went to visit one summer. I was in one of those little mom and pop stores and had to use the bathroom. There was a sign “White Only.” I didn’t pay any attention to that. The guy that owned the place went off. Luckily, he knew my Uncle Henry. When he snatched me out of that bathroom, Uncle Henry explained who I was. I was from the North. I didn’t know better. He told Uncle Henry, “Well, you better tell him where he is.” I was eight or nine and I’ll never forget it. That was my first indoctrination about what racism is in this country.
Growing up in Connecticut, I didn’t see a lot of that. I never went to a segregated school. But I had a buddy who lived two doors from me. He had a cherry tree in his backyard. He used to let me come in and pick the cherries off the tree. One day I went through his house to go back to the street instead of going around the house where it was muddy. Just as I was coming in the backdoor, his father was coming in the front door. I thought he was a great guy. He owned a little candy store on the corner. He said to his daughter, “Who told Billy to bring that … kid in this house?’
That stayed with me for a while. I was in junior high school. When we won the state championship, the first time Norwalk High School won the state championship, he wanted to honor us by coming into his store and give us hamburgers and stuff. I never told my teammates. They all went there, but I didn’t because I remembered him saying, “Why did Billy bring that colored kid in this house?” I never knew he was prejudiced. That’s the quiet prejudice.
One thing I’ve learned is there is racism all over the country, not just here in the South. Up North, we’re looking at quiet racism. You don’t know who is your enemy, and who is your friend.
Calvin Murphy is a former Rockets player, member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and current broadcaster.
Spencer Tillman
On Dec. 12, 2019, Sugar Land annexed Greatwood and New Territory, two master-planned communities just outside the city limits.
I live in New Territory. That meant Sugar Land police would now patrol our neighborhood instead of Fort Bend County sheriff’s deputies.
In a period of three months, I was stopped six times by police, five of them for no apparent reason. One of those indefensible stops was particularly troubling.
I was at the corner of New Territory Boulevard and Homeward Way, about to turn left on Homeward Way. Three lanes over, to my right, about to turn in the opposite direction, was a new Sugar Land police SUV.
I looked to my right, and our eyes met briefly. Simultaneously, the green arrow was flashing, signaling for me to turn left. I wondered why the officer didn’t turn right on red, since no one was in front of him.
As I began to make my turn left, I saw his lights flash out of my peripheral vision.
Mind you, we were headed in opposite direction, but he had darted into the intersection from that far right lane to get behind me.
I immediately pulled over to my right, almost at the end of the corner onto which I would be turning. I think he realized he didn’t want to get stuck in the intersection, so he was forced to come up beside me.
I rolled down my window, and the officer scowled at me as if I were breaking some law or improperly operating my car. I was not.
I calmly said to him. “Sir, I live right there” — pointing to my backyard, which was visible from the street. “I know I didn’t do anything wrong, and I know you weren’t behind me long enough to run my tags, so are you really stopping me”?
The officer never said a word. He slowly pulled up in front of me, which police never do. I think it was to get a clear read of my tags.
Whatever warranted him flashing his lights suddenly had become a non-issue.
I know that many people will relate what cops say to minority citizens. But in this case, the officer’s non-verbal messaging was just as telling.
I was being asked, “What business do you have here?” as I entered my own subdivision.
I built the second house in this gated community. I’ve been here longer than anyone else. I’ve watched Charles Barkley, Vernon Maxwell and Mario Elie come and go. But on that evening, to this officer, none of that mattered.
Spencer Tillman is a former NFL player, a former sportscaster for KPRC (Channel 2) and an analyst for Fox Sports, founder of Axiom Sports Productions and an adviser to the Lombardi Foundation.
Leroy Burrell
When I was in high school, must have been my junior or senior year (in 1984 or 1985), I used to leave school from time to time and go to my dad’s barbershop in West Philly and I would catch the bus. One afternoon, I waited at the bus stop, and as I was about to board the bus a number of policemen from Upper Darby Township surrounded the bus and asked me to get off. I complied and got off and they asked me some questions and told me they wanted to talk with me. I didn’t quite know why, where they came from. They eventually put me in the car and took me to the Upper Darby Police Station and started to question me where I was going and what I was doing in that area, where I had been. Of course, I answered the questions, and they told me that someone saw me and reported that I looked like someone that had assaulted someone in that area at one point. I was like, “Me? You’ve got the wrong. I just came from school. I was going to my dad’s shop.” They believed me, but it could have easily gone a different way given the environment that I think we live in now. It was all really scary. Eventually they told me they were going to let me go and put me on the train and go about my way. But I was so shaken that I just asked to go back home. My grandmother was really upset because I think, at the time, I was obviously a bit naïve to any of those types of situations. I think it’s just sometimes happenstance that you can be in the wrong place, at the wrong time and look the wrong way. Things can go erratically different.
Leroy Burrell is an Olympic gold medalist and the University of Houston track and field coach
N.D. Kalu
When I was 16 and got my driver’s license, it got to the point where if you had to be somewhere in 30 minutes, I’d leave an hour early. At the time, we weren’t upset about it. It just seemed like a way of life. When we had football practice, the coach didn’t want to hear that we got stopped by the police because we were supposed to be on time. We knew it could happen, so we tried to leave early in case it did. Once every two or three weeks, it would happen. Was it because we were Black? Absolutely. It was cordial but with the same questions: “Is this your car? Do you have any weapons in the car? What are you doing in this neighborhood?” When they asked you to get out of the car, they’d search it. When we told them we were going to football practice at John Marshall High School (in San Antonio), they’d let us go. My dad always said, “If you get stopped by the police, don’t bad-mouth them. It’s always yes sir and no sir, no matter how upset you get. If we have to, we’ll go to court to fight it.” I never thought all cops were bad, but when you didn’t know you should tread lightly with any police officer or any man with a gun. It didn’t leave me with a bad taste; I just thought that’s what it was like to be Black in America.”
N.D. Kalu is a former Rice and Texans player.
Travis Johnson
“I grew up in an all-Black neighborhood (in Los Angeles) until I was 10. I looked like everybody else. I started playing Little League when I was 5. We played on our field of dreams. When we moved to Oak Park in Ventura County, I was the only Black kid in our baseball league. I was already 5-10 and 185, and I hit bombs, nuclear shots. Being a big kid was one thing, but being a big Black kid was another. My mother had to carry my birth certificate to prove my age. I remember when I first got there and went up to my bat, my teammates would say things like, “Come on, monkey boy.” At first, that didn’t register to me. Then my Dad pulled me aside and said, “Do you know what that means?” After that, when I went up to bat, that made me want to punish everybody that said things like that to me and didn’t believe in me because I looked different from them. My Dad would tell me, ‘You’ve got to be head and shoulders above the rest if you want to be noticed,’ to get half the recognition the white kids got. That always stuck with me and made me want to be the best. I refused to be second to anybody that thought they were better than me. I never made an all-star team because the parents didn’t want me to make it. That hurt. I felt so slighted. I began to wonder, who was teaching these kids to talk and act like that? The hatred I felt at 10 and 11 years old is nothing any kid should have to face. It was dehumanizing at times, but it shaped my life.”
Travis Johnson is a former Texans player
Wade Smith
Whether it was walking to school (in Dallas) in the second grade and having a group of white guys in a pickup truck yelling the N-word, or having the same thing happening on a college recruiting visit while walking with a group of recruits some 10 years later, or the time in fourth grade when I swung on a boy that I thought was a really good friend because during an argument he decided to let me know I was a “stupid (N-word),” or at age 11, after having an excellent tryout for a select baseball team (all white team and a Puerto Rican friend of mine that went on to play in the Big 12), being smiled at by one coach telling me I did a great job and we look forward to you joining the team, to later being told on the answering machine, by a different coach that, “We don’t think it would be a good fit if I joined the group.” This one still bothers my Dad almost 30 years later. I remember vividly the conversation in my Dad’s car, where he asked me if I wanted him to confront the coaches about it and me telling him, “No, Dad, I’ll just play football.” Or when I was in the fifth grade weaving through the hallway after school, my fourth grade teacher grabbed my arm in the middle of the crowd and scolded me through gritted teeth, saying, “You’re never going to amount to anything in life” even though I was an A-student in her class the year before.
I’ve learned and had it reinforced that, at times, being Black would lead to me being excluded, belittled, ridiculed, disliked, fetishized and even hated because of the color of my skin. That was just part of life.
Growing up, I feared and revered my Mom and Dad more than God and any person that wronged me along the way. They instilled in me hard work and the importance of reading and education. I was blessed to have a Dad that worked at a newspaper, was a fan of Alex Haley and had multiple books lying around his house that spoke life into my Black experience as a youngster. The Autobiography of Malcom X and Roots are books I consider as two of my all-time favorites. My Mom was the hardest-working and smartest person I knew. She worked two jobs as far back as I can remember and was integral in keeping me on the right path and out of trouble. The fear of letting her down was my biggest motivator. I’m a proud Black Man that has accomplished more in my life than I could have ever dreamed. My outcome is the exception, and my hope is that it can become much closer to the rule. This is just another one the many opportunities to utilize my platform to create opportunities for kids with a similar background. Whether directly or indirectly, hopefully, these recollections of our experiences, protests, call for change, and our demand for respect can help future generations carve out a way to achieve their own dreams in this country.”
Wade Smith is a former Texans player
Tyron Carrier
My mom lived off (Highway) 288 and Reed Road. I was staying at home at that time. My freshman year I was on the way to 5:45 a.m. workouts coming up on the Yellowstone exit. I get pulled over. The officer walks up to my window with the flashlight so I can’t see his face. My hands are on the top of the steering wheel. He tells me to get out of the car and he opens the car door. I ask him if I can take off my seatbelt? He tells me to stand in front of the car. So, I walk up to the front of the car and he told me to turn around and put my hands on the hood. I did. He checked me and asked me if I had anything on me. I told him no. He made me move away from the front of the car and walk out some more and have my hands up. My back is to the car now. He told me, “If you (expletive) move or if you run, I will (expletive) kill you.” Exactly the words that came out of his mouth. Now the officer was white. I’m literally trying to stay as still as possible facing away from the car. They just rip through my car. I think it took them 10 minutes. I guess he doesn’t find anything, and before you know it the big spotlight that was on his car that was shining on my car went away and he accelerated past me. I turn around and look at all my stuff is on the side of the street. They literally just threw things out of my car. Just threw things out of my car. I had to put everything back in. I had some speakers in there. My backseat was were my (amplifier) was. They ripped the amp out. They just threw everything out and I had to put everything back in and go to practice. I tried to ask (why I was pulled over) right when he told me to get out of the car, but he was just so aggressive that I just knew it could be bad. I was more nervous about them planting something on me. I just wanted to not ask too many questions and let them do what they wanted to do. I can remember the incident, but the crazy thing about it is I could never get a face. I never knew to ask for a badge number. I was always taught to have your hands up; say yes sir, no sir; don’t make any sudden moves; and you ask permission to do anything they ask you to do just so you can make it home.
Tyron Carrier is a former UH All-American receiver and now an assistant coach at UH
Hugh McElroy
I have not experienced (harassment) in the sense of physical brutality. I’ve been followed around stores while shopping. A lot of times law enforcement in retail outlets might not be in uniform, but everybody knows who the store detectives are, and that’s happened more times than I’d like to count.
I’ve been followed through neighborhoods while driving. If you’re looking for trouble, then you can make trouble (as a victim). As in, “Why are you following me?” And you can get confrontational about it — or not.
I’ve also had experiences one-on-one, not with law enforcement necessarily, but where I felt like I was the victim of what I’ll call systemic racism. I don’t want to incriminate anybody, because their situation has been dealt with, but I’ll just say it was in an employee-employer relationship.
Hugh McElroy was Texas A&M’s first Black starter in football in 1970
Kevin Sumlin
I wear many hats each day: father, brother, son, coach, friend, boss, colleague. But yet no matter what hat I put on, the color of my skin does not change.
Being a college head football coach, blessed to earn more than I could have ever imagined, does not make me immune to the same suspicious stares, to the same fears of being pulled over, to the same assumptions that others make of me, to the same racist remarks sent in my direction, simply because I am Black.
I was born in 1964 in the heart of the civil rights movement, and grew up with a generation that should have done more to correct the wrongs in America. But maybe we have failed. George Floyd’s death is the latest of hundreds — thousands? — of unnecessary and tragic deaths of black men and women during my lifetime that never should have happened. But we didn’t push hard enough for change.
When I look at my football teams, a true melting pot of diversity, I am buoyed by their thoughtfulness, their desire to do better and their willingness to demand change. Perhaps this generation will be the one to fundamentally ensure social justice in America.
So, for now, what I will focus on is what I can control: My own resolve to be a part of the solution. In gestures big and small, each and every day, I must do my part to foster a better understanding among all of us. And if each of us takes on a similar responsibility maybe, maybe we won’t have to ever think, “Not again.”
Kevin Sumlin is former football coach at Houston, Texas A&M and Arizona
Shaquille Gould
Racism at TAMU feels like:
* When three cadets in your (Corps of Cadets) outfit write “n*****” on a broom and nothing happens after they get caught.
* When all 22 cadets are in a room together after that broom accident, and one decides to play a song by a KKK (promoter in Johnny Rebel) “N***** Hating Me” while more than a fourth of the room laughs and the rest stand there awkwardly.
* When a fellow student says to you: “I usually don’t like Black people, but you seem like one of the good ones.”
* When you’re the No. 1 ranked Air Force cadet two semesters in a row, and top five in the third, with perfect scores across the board (in) leadership, fitness and GPA … but (you’re) passed up over 50 times for an Air Force scholarship across three semesters — and later (you) find out that the captain in charge was a racist.
* When a former Aggies (couple) don’t want their kids to take a picture with the “dark yell leader.”
* When a classmate my freshman year says: “You’re the first Black person I’ve ever met in real life. You’re a lot different than the Blacks in movies.”
* These are a tiny fraction of my own experiences with racism at A&M. Multiply my experiences across tens of thousands of Black students and other minorities at A&M, and if you still think this is only about the (Sul Ross) statue (debate), then nothing we say will make you change.
But I won’t stop speaking out.
Shaquille Gould is a former Texas A&M yell leader (2015)
Romeo Crennel
Race, as far as impacting my career, I think there’s some positives and some negatives. Because when I got my first coaching job at Western Kentucky, I was the first Black coach on the football staff. I think the fact that I was a student there, I was a player there and they knew me — they knew what type of person that I was — I think that helped me get the job. A lot of times, coaching jobs, the timing has to be right for you. Western being a small school, Division II at the time, the coaching staff was full, there really wasn’t room for another coach. So I was a (graduate assistant). But one of the coaches on the staff decided that he wanted to go into private business and he was getting out of coaching, and that created a spot. And so I was there, I was available and the head coach, Jimmy Feix, decided to offer me the job, and he offered me the job and I took the job. ... There were not that many Black coaches at that time. Many Black coaches at that time were hired for two functions. For whatever coaching ability they had and then the recruiting ability, because the push was being made to recruit more Black players. And so I think that coaches felt like if they had a minority on the staff, he would help mentor the Black players, help the Black players come to play for that program. That was a good aspect of it. A negative aspect of coaching is your ability to move up the ladder and sometimes that was a little bit more difficult as a Black man and particularly when I looked at the head coaching scenario in college. Many times when a school was down and out and had been down and out and basically nowhere to go, then they would offer the job to a Black coach to try to revive the program somehow, and knowing that maybe if he was not able to revive it they might shut the program down anyway. And so those were the only opportunities a Black man had. And when you’re dealing with that type of program, the chances of turning it around are much more difficult. That’s what I was looking at when I first got into coaching and seeing what was happening. But over the years it got better, more Black coaches were hired, more Black coaches began to have opportunities to climb the ladder and then the head coaching position opened up more for Black coaches. I’ve seen that evolution in the college ranks.
I don’t think in the NFL that racism is necessarily overt. It’s not directly outward and out there. But I think much of it comes in the ability for a Black coach to ascend within the league. And this is when you’re talking about becoming a head coach and how many opportunities do Black guys get to do that. When you look at the numbers, it’s not great. And so a lot of times in this world of analytics now, you have to look at numbers to see what the numbers tell you. The numbers are not the end-all but they might show a trend. I think that’s what we deal with. I was an assistant for a while before I had the opportunity to be a coordinator, and then I became a head coach because we had a good run and people saw that I could run the defense. I know George Young, who was the (general manager) with the (New York) Giants, he told me, he said, ‘If a guy can run half the team, then I’ve got to believe that he can run the whole team.’ ... If you don’t have guys in the position of coordinator, then it makes it tough for them to become a head coach.”
Most of the racism that I encountered is when I was a young kid living in Virginia. So there is some racism there. And you know, when I was talking to the McNairs, I mentioned riding the back of the bus. And in town on the weekends, when you went to town, you went to the movies and you had to go upstairs to the balcony. You could not go into the main theater, because that’s where the white people were sitting. So you saw that. The bathrooms: The white bathroom and the colored bathroom. It’s called colored bathroom then. The drinking fountains: One drinking fountain and a colored drinking fountain. And so those things I encountered a little bit more when I was younger. I think the thing that made somewhat of a difference for me is that my father was in the military and we lived on the military post much of the time. And so I was living in integrated housing and I was going to an integrated school. But along the way, when we’re not on the post, I’m living in the community and so then we’re living in the Black part of town. I remember when I was maybe fifth or sixth grade, I was going to a one-room school and we had one teacher and he taught three grades; he was also the principal of the school. And so some of those things you had to deal with because you didn’t have any other choice. And my father was going to say, ‘You’re going to go to school.’ But those were some of the things that crossed my path in life. But because I was able to live on the post and go to integrated schools and live in integrated housing, my path was just a little different than some others who had to live on the other side of town all their lives and had to deal with all the things that go along with that.
Romeo Crennell is interim head coach of the Texans
Elston Turner
There’s so many. For me, they come and go; nothing bad enough to stick out. Some of this is 30 years ago, 40 years ago. Little, little bits and pieces. It probably falls under the category of profiling. When you get pulled over for not signaling to change lanes. It’s just a legal, common way to stop you to run all your information or look in your car. Not a lot, but it has happened at least three or four times. One time, it was that the light that shines on your license plate was out. You get pulled over.
One time when I was home for my father’s funeral, a long time ago. I was playing overseas. I fly in from Spain. I fly in to Knoxville. My friend rented me a car, a Lincoln Town car. I’m sitting at the gas station. The police pulls up. “That’s a really nice car.” “Yeah, it rides good.” I’m making conversation. He’s looking at the car. “Where you’d get it?” It went from there to show the license and registration. I’m parked at a gas station, so he didn’t pull me over to stop me for having a missing taillight or rolling through a stop sign or speeding. A lot of times in certain neighborhoods it’s looked at as unusual for certain people to be driving nice cars.
If you’re walking from the grocery store to your car, or from Home Depot, and there’s people waiting in their car for someone, you hear the doors lock. Getting into tight, crowded spaces as much as we’re in and out of hotels, you see people clutch up when you’re in the elevator with them. I don’t know if it’s racism. I can’t pinpoint as to why. Everyday occurrences Black folks have to deal with gets to be the norm sometimes. It’s stereotypes you deal with that every person of color may have.
It gets to be routine. This is what you expect. You go on. When it happens, you let it roll off your back and keep moving.
I went to school at Ole Miss. Everybody was “Why you going there, why going down there?” Confederate flags were flying at the time. That’s the way it was. I had the best time in my life. Maybe a regular student would have a different story, but my experience where I went to school was good. My experience was fantastic.
I haven’t had a lot of issues, but just being alive, you experience some. In my neighborhood, and this never happened to me, but some people get busted with drugs and get categorized as a user and get one year and a Black person gets classified as a kingpin and get 20 to life. Stuff like that.
Elston Turner is a former assistant coach with the Rockets
Jacob Martin
As a Black man born and raised in the United States of America, in the land of the free and home of the brave, you learn that the simple social liberties that most Americans receive are not afforded to you. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do won’t matter because your Blackness is armed and dangerous. You have the right to an attorney, but by the declaration of your Blackness you are already guilty.
Growing up in a middle-class Black family and living in predominately white neighborhoods and attending predominately white schools I have felt the bite of racism. I know many others that have felt the same.
Racism comes in many different forms but in particular I recall an incident that happened with my Mother. My Mom has been a grade school teacher for over 25 years and has worked in affluent school districts and impoverished school districts.
While we lived in Colorado, she taught in the same school district we lived in. This particular area was pretty affluent with a predominantly white student body. One day while she was cleaning her science classroom a parent walked in wanting to speak to Mrs. Martin.
My mom asked, “How may I help you”? The parent was adamant that she wanted to speak to the science teacher, Mrs. Martin. My mom repeated herself, paused and waited.
The parent stood there looking puzzled and began looking sheepishly as the realization struck her that the Black lady tidying up the classroom was indeed the person she needed to see. It just so happens to be the same parent that complained to the administration that my mom would not change a grade on her child’s test because she felt that even though all the answers were incomplete she should’ve received full credit for everything she indicated as an answer. My mom ultimately changed jobs.
This is the kind of polite racism that undermines the Black community. In the age of social media these kind of actions coined as Karenisms have been the very kind of dangerous interactions historically, that have enticed people to give Black males non judicial death sentences. Many so-called riots, aka lynchings, which were no more state-approved murder through indifference began as some perceived protection of a white citizen’s virtues or supposed affront on their elevated standing.
In another instance, a white principal while she was teaching in another school district warned her about choice words and was given a book of the same name, “Choice Words” by Peter H Johnson. Back story: the students of this predominantly Black and brown school did not perform well on an assignment.
My mom said she was “disappointed” and “they could do better.”
Mind you she was tutoring after school and during lunch to assist any student. The principal told her those words were harmful to the students and gave her the book as a result, ignoring the questions about lowered expectations for students.
See my mom is the kind of teacher that wants to ignite the genius in all of her students so she has a sign that has hung every classroom, she has ever taught in a family creed coined by my Great Grandfather, “Nothing beats a failure but a try.”
Here is the kicker: a colleague screamed at the students near her room “shut the (…) up” to a group of students where other staff heard it. This white teacher according to the principal was having a bad day and should be afforded a break.
My question is: Why wasn’t this other teacher given the book about “Choice Words” a book aimed at coaching teachers how to successfully communicate to their students to cultivate an environment that is conducive to learning?
This kind of tone policing — tone policing is the act of silencing a person’s ideas and thoughts on the basis of their emotional tone consequently, ignoring the actual content of their message. It is a deflection of the actual message that the receiver did not want to acknowledge in the first place. Control of this kind is often exercised over someone that is not considered to be valued for their thoughts. Invariably the person not receptive to the message will come back and say later, why didn’t you tell us what was happening? This kind of rhetoric is oppressing the voices and thoughts of marginalized people. It’s the same rhetoric that created the idea that women of color who are passionate and driven, are now seen as the angry Black women.
People that are in positions of power or benefit from white privilege, in this case the principal used tone policing to avoid those difficult conversations . Instead they attack the character and emotion of the person who brought the disagreement up, rather that address the real issue.
Tone policing is not a new practice.
At present we are living in the shadow of Martin Luther King’s concerns about the white moderate allies who are more concerned with order than justice, who say I agree with your concerns, but could you express your discontent in a better way? Despite the kumbaya feels at the moment with regards to MLK, he was not readily received as well until upon his death. During his life protest was the voice of the unheard and is imbued into the very fabric of this country’s foundation. The Boston Tea Party and the Alamo come to mind, even as one was for the ending of bias in representation, the other was to continue to be able to use bias to subjugate an entire race of people.
Jacob Martin is a player with the Texans
Keith Watson
There are recognizable elements of racism that we can agree on that are easy to understand, whether it is racial epithets or being brutalized or attacked in a physical manner. We can agree those are part of the impact of racism, but what a lot of times has gone unspoken until recently is the systemic side of racism and the faceless, anonymous kind of racism and how it impacts people.
There were small things he experienced in subtle ways. Here’s an example. (My dad, Bob Watson) was the first Black general manager, but you see these constant references that he was the second. The reality is that Bill Lucas was never the GM of the Braves. He had another job that should be celebrated as a vice president. The conflation of Bill Lucas and his vice president’s role and Bob Watson’s role as general manager has been conflated to the point where it downplays both of them.
You wouldn’t think of that as racism, but what’s the reason for it if it’s not? It’s a subtle thing, but it’s emblematic of the bigger picture. There were a lot of small things he had to deal with that can be brushed away as, ‘Well, that’s just part of what you have to deal with when you’re the first.’ Well, why? Why can’t we talk about the why? That’s the uncomfortable part of the conversation.
The more shocking events he experienced had an impact, but the ongoing exposure to the more nuanced levels may have had a bigger impact. What that represents Is the 24-hour a day impact of systemic racism vs. the event of somebody calling you the n-word or somebody pointing a gun at you and telling you to get out of their neighborhood. Those are traumatic experiences, but there is a difference between that level of trauma and the 24-hour a day trauma of having to take things into consideration that other people don’t have to take into consideration.
Even when you do everything right and you overcome the challenges, you’re still faced with a level of downplaying or demeaning your accomplishments in an offhanded way, even if you’ve done everything right. An example would be that when he left the Yankees after winning a World Series, he interviewed with the Dodgers, he interviewed with ESPN, he interviewed with other teams, and nothing happened.
At the same time, John Schuerholz got a five-year, $27 million extension with the Braves, the team the Yankees beat. That was an uncomfortable position for Major League Baseball, so when Frank Robinson took the job with the Nationals as manager, my dad took his job as the on-field disciplinary guy. It would be safe to say that role in that particular job at that time was the most undesirable position in the commissioner’s office. Nobody likes the guy who fines everybody. But what showcase his character is that he took the job nobody wanted and turns it into a job that, 12 years later, that Joe Torre wanted.
When it comes to the future, he was optimistic about the direction in which Major League Baseball was headed, but he also had very low expectations. He was happy to see progress, but did he have expectations of things to continue in a manner that would be appreciated by a wide swath of our community? He did not. But his role was never about being vocal or taking an activist stance.
Today, the conversation has shifted from whether the situation (of systemic racism) even exists to how do we deal with it. Because of what my dad experienced and what his legacy represents, we are dealing with the facts now. We’re not dealing with conflation or false equivalency conversations about race. We are having substantive, fact-based conversations about what has taken place but also about how we are going to move forward to make things more equitable across the board. We are able to have more productive conversations about race rather than conversations that don’t lead anywhere.
I’ve never tried to step into my dad’s shoes and speak for him, but we did talk about social issues. I would say that his expectations were that the truth would empower all of us if we could just embrace it for what it is rather than just making it what we want it to be. If we can be honest and transparent and forthright about our true feelings, what our concerns are and what we can do to address them, those conversations will lead to a better, more healthy society and better relationships, better businesses, better lives, better education. It is time to follow his lead and focus on treating each other better, with more respect and kindness, being honest and being truthful.
Keith Watson is the son of Bob Watson, the former Astros player and general manager who died in May
The Chronicle’s David Barron, Adam Coleman, Joseph Duarte, Jonathan Feigen, Brian T. Smith, Aaron Wilson and Brent Zwerneman contributed to this report.
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