basketball game summary

Upon walking into the stadium and seeing the crowd and the teams, I realized that athletics are one of the rare places at Southwestern that you’ll find diversity. I was struck by the percentage of African American non student fans there were compared to the number of African American players on the team. As the game started, an interesting series of events started to unfold. Although I can’t speak for the entire crowd, I was able to hear my friends and two parties, one of which was primarily comprised of African Americans and one of which was about half African American, behind me. The first thing I noticed was that although everyone was cheering pretty hard for the team as a whole, the people around me would erupt when the starting African American point guard was given the ball. The African American kids behind me knew his name, only his name, and insisted that he shoot the ball every time he got it. The adults seemed disappointed every time he passed it away, voicing their sentiments for him publicly. This may, in part, be because the point guard is very short, a senior, or a variety of other reasons but as I looked around I saw the same response from most of the African American players in the crowd. His parents or at least I assume they were his parents, were surrounded by African Americans who seemed to live and die every time he touched the ball. Although I was very aware of it, I don’t think it was something that was noticeable to the untrained eye. Halftime brought more entertainment. The athletes of the year were announced, the African American point guard and a white female golfer, and they came to the center of the court to get their trophies. After posing for pictures with their family, they exchanged what may have been the most awkward hug I’ve ever witnessed. This could be because the girl was dressed up and our point guard was sweaty and shorter than her, but the crowd seemed to think it was for other reasons. A man behind me said something along the lines of, “oh man did you see how scared that boy was to hug that girl. Haha. Man black guys just need to learn to squeeze white girls.” Although it was funny for all members of the crowd, it seemed a bit odd for two reasons. First of all why would hugging each other be something that the two athletes decided to do if they weren’t comfortable with it? My guess is that they felt pressure from the crowd to create a picture perfect moment of that it was something that they were told to do. Secondly, was the crowd’s response legitimate and why did only the African Americans react to it? Was the point guard scared to hug the white girl in front of a crowd? It seemed as though most of the white members didn’t see anything unnatural about it but it elicited quite a response out of the African American crowd.