As you all know, I have taken another road trip, and tonight, I went to the Alabama State – Jackson State game in the Joe L Reed Acadome here in Montgomery. I’ll get into that later, mostly because I forgot my USB cord, and I would like to upload some pictures to add to the story. But I thought I would separate this into it’s own post.
Alabama State (and for that matter Jackson State) is a historically black college, and it sits downtown in one of the most important American cities in regards to black history. I thought, going into this game, that this would be a good cultural lesson for me. It would show me what it would be like to be the minority, demonstrate for me what it would be like to feel the stares of people superficially different than me. After getting a couple of glances walking in to the Acadome, I entered the arena and took my seat behind the ASU band (great band, by the way), and a funny thing happened.
Nothing.
I was hypersensetive to the attention being paid me, myself looking all across the crowd trying to see if anyone had keyed on me with any sort of look of curiosity or interest, and I found none. The ticket taker took no mind. The people who sold me my t-shirt didn’t pay attention. The assistant band director only made sure that I was sitting far enough back so as not to be interfering with the percussion section. Other than that, nothing.
You could say it was all the spirit of sports that binds us, but I think it was something more bland, purely statistical. Even though I was at this historically black college, in a historic black town, the fact is, Caucasians are still the majority (or at least very close in Montgomery) across the country, and frankly, everyone has grown acclimated to having white people around everywhere. The thing I learned, essentially, is that no matter what we do, I just don’t believe it’s possible for a Caucasian man to truly emulate life as an African-American. We’d all be better off if everyone was as accepting as the crowd at Alabama State.
(It really was a good game, I just wanted to get that off of my chest. I’ll have a more sportsy post when I get home. In the mean time, am I the only one that noticed that all the buildings in Montgomery are white?)
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