I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It by Charles Barkley

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 and say, “ ‘Morning, good to see you guys today”?
    You have ugly-ass stuff happen to you like that, what the hell you going to have, a smiley face?
    I’ve been reading about that brother Donald Watkins from Alabama. He talked about buying the Twins, about buying the Angels. Personally, I’d love to see him involved in some other ownership ventures. Hell, he doesn’t have to go to Minnesota or California either. We could use a guy of his resources right at home in Alabama. It’s a complicated thing because chances are overwhelming that even if the league and owners allow him to buy in, he’s never going to really be made a part of the network. He’ll be an owner, but sadly he would probably never be in the mix. It is a travesty, though, that we’re past the year 2000 and no person of color is the majority owner of a professional sports franchise. That’s crazy.
    I don’t want people to think my concerns about race only deal with white people. In fact, I tend to be harder on black people who are prejudiced than white people. If you have suffered as much and as long as black people have suffered . . . If you have fought racism and seen your parents and grandparents fight racism . . . If you know the history of the suffering your own people have been through for hundreds of years and you intentionally mistreat people because of the color of their skin, that’s just really, really sad to me.
    And I know that point is complex, too, because resentment and bitterness are natural when you’ve had your ass handed to you generation after generation. You’ve got