Do you spend a lot of time wondering just who you are, and what made you that way? If, like me, you are of European descent with whitish skin, probably not. So, like, I am guessing, most people of my background, when I read about four clowns being thrown out of a Chicago Black Hawks hockey game for taunting an opposing player in the penalty box with “Basketball, basketball, basketball”, my gut reaction was to dismiss the ensuing controversy by attributing it as politically incorrect nonsense and toss it into my mental wastebasket.
But as I scrolled through reader responses on sports sites, it began to occur to me about how great the divide between people based on race and ethnic origin is. It became clear to me that chanting “basketball” toward a black hockey player was really no different than using more easily recognizable derogatory terms. Yeah, like the one that starts with N. There can be no other explanation for the intent of those words.
Fast forward to last week when I read a column on Huffingpost by a black playwright and blogger named Trey Anthony. In her opinion piece, Anthony wrote about her four-year-old nephew being taken to see the acclaimed new movie, Black Panther. His parents struggled about the movie’s suitability for a child. “Yet they decided that the opportunity for a young black boy to see himself on a big screen happens far too infrequently,” she said.
The boy loved the movie, sitting rapt for its entire length. The next morning he asked that everyone call him T’Challa, after the movie’s lead character. He dances joyously to music from Black Panther.
“When someone wants to question if representation matters, I have to look at them in utter disbelief. Does it shape you in a different way to see your own personal image on screen? Of course, it does! When the daily images that you see of yourself are negative or non-existent, it does something to your psyche. It chips away at your soul. It makes you feel you do not matter. It makes you feel invisible,” Anthony says.
I am, by nature, an introvert. A century ago Carl Jung described what that means: Extroverted people are energized by social interactions, whereas those same engagements are energetically taxing for introverts. So after attending a party or other social gathering, introverts need time alone to ‘recharge.’”
But being an introvert doesn’t mean I lack self-confidence. I grew up in a working class neighbourhood, the son of a former school teacher and a man who quit school in Grade 8. I had all the insecurities and fears that any kid had, but I never questioned that I could make my way in whatever place in the world I chose. I could aspire to any career I wanted, I could travel, I could choose my friends. By the age of 16, I was talking to MLAs, MPs, and premiers, and not because it was something my parents did. I could not envision limitations other than those I placed on myself. And why would I? All the white characters on television and movies were role models. Gordie Howe grew up skating on a pond in Saskatchewan and look what he accomplished. The people and fictional characters I admired and modeled myself after were white, and they were everywhere around me. My mom and dad had their struggles, but they also grew up in loving, caring, stable homes, and saw everywhere around them role models that shaped their own lives.
It has not taken all of my six-plus decades to become grateful for having been born into what can only be described as a life of privilege, a life that quite literally had no barriers. But I still do need reminding, as Trey Anthony and her nephew have done, that we don’t all live in that same world.