racism

I don't know if I can say that I've seen racism....but I've witnessed things that made me wonder. What I've seen a lot of is the 'preferential treatment' of certain individuals by their coaches.

We are a very diverse urban school and in the past, we've had some small town coaches that can run the Lombardi-style of coaching thing (trying to be a distant dictator brow-beating the kids), where the player should not talk and should be treated like a serf.

I know that the coaches I'm referring to, seemed to over value the over acheiving white kids with little or no athletic ability and never seem to have a positive comment in regards to the black kids that have started in the past and, who, if you did nothing but watch film of them, you wouldn't question starting the kid.....In a sense, the coach couldn't relate, nor did he want to, understand these kids.

Don't know if that made any sense, but to me, it really seemed weird --- in a large part because the coach just didn't like the player's "attitude" or "expression". When you make everything (athletically) look easy, it would appear to some that you're really not working hard.