Pretty much every morning now, I can expect to wake up and check my inbox to find at least one email from a friend in my vast network across the globe from 10 years of professional basketball, asking the same thing:
“Seriously? Trump? What is going on over there?”
Either, I pretend to ignore the emails (such is the embarrassment), or I sheepishly write a response that is a hybrid of explanation and apology.
I don’t know what is more frightening: That we have grown adults in our country, foot-chasing Japanese cartoons through their phones into oncoming traffic; or that we actually have 3 out of 10 Americans supporting this man named… Donald Trump.
While some find solace in saying, “Yes, only 3 out of 10 support Trump and that is the lowest a GOP candidate has started out of the gate since…”
To me, 3 out of 10 people is still way too high. 3 out of 10 support his narcissism, bullying, and racism and are emboldened by it.
It blows my mind that 100,000 people lined up in Ohio and voted “Yes” for Trump in the Republican primaries.
I wish I could actually, for a day, be inside the mind of a Trump supporter and understand how they could stand in line for hours to vote for someone, who at the core of his platform, is asking me to put all of my faith into him, one man, believing that he, “Alone, can fix it.” I can’t think of anything more Un-American than conceding my agency and self-manifestation to another person.
“I can’t think of anything more un-American than conceding my agency and self-manifestation to another person.”
Traveling the world for 10 years, I have experienced the discrimination to which we - white American males – are unaccustomed, if not oblivious to, here at home in the United States; discrimination that many of my black teammates sadly grew up accepting as part of everyday life.
Quite a few times throughout my professional career, I had opportunities to go play for a team overseas, but once the owner found out I was white, they reneged. I usually found it more comical than insulting, knowing that the job was never going to work out anyway, as they obviously didn’t understand basketball.
I guess I had developed a thick skin with all the bullying I had endured as a kid due to my hearing loss and the way I talked. On that point as well, there were a few times that once a prospective coach discovered that I had 80% hearing loss and I couldn’t play basketball with my hearing aides in, before ever actually meeting me, the coach would say with self-aggrandizing importance, “No, I cannot have a deaf player. My system is too complex.”
Silly, because the international 24-second shot clock does not allow much time for complexity and brilliance… I don’t suffer pretentious people very well.
There have been times playing in the Middle East or in Venezuela, where I actually have been in fear when approached by police and municipal authorities. Real fear. I was an easy target: a lone white, 7-foot American male.
I share these stories and experiences, not to gain sympathy, but to give empathy; To say to my teammates, and all of my other fellow Americans who have a different skin tone than me: I am sorry.
Yes, I have experienced discrimination of my own skin color, my own disability. It is a horrible, frustrating and ridiculous feeling. Simply put: It sucks. No one should ever have to experience it. And I have experienced it. But never have I experienced it within my own country. It is bad enough experiencing it in foreign land, where I don’t have rights as a citizen. But to experience it in my own country?
In my own country!
I can’t even imagine. And for that, I am so sorry.
To all of my friends and teammates of different color, my brothers who have shared blood, sweat and tears with me through the years on the battlegrounds of the athletic arena:
I am sorry.
I am sorry for all the stereotypes I taunted you with in the locker room banter.
I am sorry for trying to downplay your woes with my flippant sympathy by saying, “Well, it could always be worse…” and callously selecting something lower on the misery index scale.
I am sorry I was oblivious for so long to the fear you experience whenever a cop pulls you over.
I am sorry that people immediately assume you are lazy and live off of food stamps and that you are all takers, unless you vote for Trump.
I am sorry for Trump.
I am sorry for the seedy underbelly of racism and bigotry that still lives in our 21st century American life.
I am sorry I was so naïve to believe that it was gone and that we were past that.
I am sorry that we have people yelling “Make America Great Again,” when what they really mean is, “Make the white American male all-powerful again.”
I am sorry we have made the life and administration of the First Black President in the United States such a spiteful gridlock. Bill and Hillary Clinton, with their Medical Reform in the 90’s never experienced that much acrimony… But if Bill and Hillary had been black?
I am sorry that we have so many people minimizing your experiences as an American Citizen, by saying, “All lives matter.”
I am sorry for so many more things, and I have no problem apologizing for my privileges, as I am secure enough in my place in this world to know I lose nothing by giving empathy.
I guess I am a lucky man, because life has pushed me out of my comfort zone, out of my bubble, and forced me to travel around the world.
I am sorry for so many more things, and I have no problem apologizing for my privileges, as I am secure enough in my place in this world to know I lose nothing by giving empathy.
Mark Twain said it best, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
(Note: 5-Star resort bubble-hopping is not traveling.)
I wish we could funnel some government spending and send every Trump supporter on a two-week vacation to Venezuela.
My bet would be that many of them would return home, finally able to say,
“Black lives matter.”
Lance Allred is the First Deaf Player in NBA History, Keynote Motivational Speaker and Best Selling Author
Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook: @lanceallred41
Watch his TEDx smash hit “What is your Polygamy?”