I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [18]
But that hurt me to my heart, to have reporters who knew me misrepresent what I said. To turn that into “Charles doesn’t like white people” was totally asinine and just plain wrong. It was mean. It bothered me to wake up the next morning to people calling me a racist, after all the shit I’ve been through down in Alabama. I grew up with my mother and grandmother telling me about the four little girls being killed in that Birmingham church, about the marches and violence in Selma. That really bothered me.
There are times I may joke around and try to lighten the mood when the atmosphere is tense, but not when we’re discussing a specific issue that needs to be talked about. That incident hurt me, and I just kind of laid down the gauntlet. I decided I was going to say what I felt about things, and if they are controversial or unpopular, then so be it. I wasn’t going to become subservient and afraid to speak out about certain things. There might be a few folks who say they want you to speak your mind on certain issues, but most folks don’t want to hear any opinion different from their own or the majority opinion because it’s uncomfortable. It disturbs their comfort level. I guess the bottom line for me became “Screw it, I’m going to do my own thing.”
Luckily, one of the few places where you don’t find much of this shit is the locker room. Of course, guys who play sports have their prejudices, too. We all do. And there are exceptions, but when it comes time to bond together and form a team and play the games, players don’t care what color you are if you can play. One of the reasons sports is so important is that one of the few times people forget about prejudice and bigotry—their own—is when they are dealing with sports or entertainment. They can leave whatever they’re doing, go see a Spike Lee movie like Do the Right Thing and cheer like hell. Or go and see Michael Jordan play and cheer like hell, or Tiger. But away from sports or entertainment, their daughter better not bring a young brother home.
But the locker room is safe from most of that stuff because people care about winning so much. I guess it hasn’t been that long since even great players were subjected to it, although I don’t know how much of that stuff came from other players. We know what owners and general managers and athletic directors felt. Can you imagine Hall of Famers having been turned away from certain schools? Oscar Robertson wanted to go to IU, but guys like him and Bob Gibson got turned away from big state schools, rejected because they’re black. Schools were telling them, “Sorry, we can’t have any more in here—we’ve already got our one.”
It was fascinating watching the profiles of some of these guys on ESPN’s SportsCentury series. You’d hear how guys were turned away because of race, and a few minutes later you’d see reporters who covered them and historians come on and talk about “how mean these guys were.” I’m sitting there thinking, “They got treated like crap their whole lives. They couldn’t go to their first college of choice because the school wasn’t taking any blacks or maybe taking only one, and people want to know why they are upset or bitter.” They don’t understand that he’s got to be bitter. He ought to be bitter. How could he not be surly? He’d have to be. It’s impossible not to be. “You gotta go around to the back door of the restaurant, to the kitchen, to get something to eat. You can’t stay in the same hotel as your white teammates. And we’re only going to have one of you per team.” What do you expect—they were going to walk into the clubhouse