I have written a tremendous amount about my disease; however, this week, I would like to share some perspective on race relations. This currently seems to be a very relevant topic. I do not know why hatred occasionally shows up, but it is usually a complete lack of knowledge.
Let me just share some experiences from my background. Due to playing two sports in college and being a female, I have had a variety of encounters. First, the majority of people are amazing. Every race has some “bad eggs”, but for the most part, humans are good people.
Since I was also a female in a predominately male business, I can relate to some of the pain of being a minority. When I played basketball at IU, our team was about half white and half black and we all got along great. We had a mixed locker room and would joke with each other about who had rhythm and could dance and who had no clue.
During a couple of my years, there were three of us that lived in an apartment. One was from Detroit, the other was from Hancock County, and I was from Noblesville. The gal from Detroit was African American and she would talk about the lack of rhythm that we had . . . I can remember her teaching us the “Detroit Shuffle” and all of us laughing on a regular basis.
We also had standing jokes. I told her that I wanted her to come to Noblesville to visit and she would tell me that she would come to Noblesville after I visited Detroit. On the basketball team, no one saw color as an issue. In fact we would all laugh about the subtle differences. We got along great and would make plenty of jokes. I can remember multiple bus rides through small towns in Indiana where they would make jokes about getting down on the floor so no one could see them. At the time, I had no clue what they were talking about, and then I quickly learned that some of these places had horrible reputations as being very racist.
I have been to parties where I was one of the few white people attending. The best part about college is that color was not an issue in athletics. We all liked each other and if anything, we were “color blind”. However, one could definitely feel the stares when one was in a “different neighborhood”.
I can remember being in Anderson, Indiana playing in a pickup game where I was not only the only white person, but I was also the only female. Sports are great for erasing differences. No one cares about your color — they just care about whether you can perform.
To a much lesser degree, I saw some of the same differences in golf. When I played, there were different nationalities participating. One would always see them “segregated” to one area of the practice green talking to each other. They were not practicing segregation — they were just catching up with each other since they were not from the USA.
This same thing would occur at the cafeterias at college. Most of the time the African Americans would sit together — not because they wanted to segregate — but because they all had a lot in common and it was “comfortable”. So many of us never get out of our “comfort zone”. In my opinion, it is the best thing that you can do for yourself — meeting and learning from a different race is incredibly interesting.
I am very disappointed that it is 2017 and this Country continues to have issues with the differences of its own citizens. I have been the majority and I have been the minority and the best thing we can do is to understand and help each other. I was fortunate to be a part of a business that had a lot of success in the automotive field, and a great deal of it was due to having a very diverse sales force that catered to everyone. It’s 2017 — the best road to success is to include everyone.