Don’t underestimate the Black and Brown kids…charity isn’t justice
In the winter of 2016, my brother and I founded The Rising Point, an organization formed with the purpose of using soccer as a tool to develop quality people and to build community. One of the other significant reasons we wanted to create something like this was to reach kids who are systematically excluded from participating in a pay-to-play system that has overtaken the landscape of youth soccer in the United States.
5 years ago, my brother and I held our inaugural camp for The Rising Point. As we looked out at the players in front of us, we were excited that they looked like us and that they wanted to be a part of this experience. It made us think deeply about what it means to give back to communities that we come from and how we can provide these children with quality experiences that help them grow both on and off the field.
Quality; I’ll revisit this word later. First, I want to talk about charity and justice.
I think that the word “charity” is oftentimes confused — and substituted — for “justice”. This is a distinction that is crucial for us to make if we are to move towards creating more equitable pathways forward for Black and Brown kids in our society and around the world. Charity is a response to something that someone needs right now. Justice is a deliberate and intentional shift in the frameworks, policies, and actions of institutions and political structures.
Let me provide an example.
Several years ago, my brother and I were invited out to a field in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle for a camp put on by a local soccer club. As soon as we arrived, we were delighted to see many African children — boys and girls — running around while their parents watched and encouraged them from the sidelines. It seemed like an awesome setup, but then, my 20-year-old mind started to ask questions about what I was actually seeing.
A predominantly white coaching staff ran the camp and one of the first red flags I noticed was their insistence on taking a lot of pictures. Taking pictures isn’t bad. Handing out shirts with your club’s name on them isn’t bad either. However, I wanted to see and listen to the club’s methodologies in practice as they made a concerted effort to provide some sort of structure and guidance for the kids they were working with. I was wary of this being just a photo-op.
No structure or framework existed for this camp. Several fields were lined and balls were rolled out for the kids to run around without any kind of instruction. I think what frustrated me — and still does — is the fact that I saw many talented young players on the field that day, and I don’t know if they learned anything. Seriously. This could have been an opportunity for them to learn from the “experts” who came to them for the weekend, but it wasn’t.
I started to question the motives of the people who were running this experience. I asked a few coaches how they thought the kids were doing. I said, “The field looks too big, could we make it smaller?”. I was met with confused and incredulous looks, as if the idea of a smaller field was crazy, even though it would mean more touches on the ball for each player, more decision-making, and better organization, to name a few things.
The responses I got focused on everything except for the actual games happening in front of our eyes. “That was a really nice picture, take another one.” “Don’t the shirts look great on the kids?” “This is awesome, isn’t it?” What about coaching the kids how to manage space or their body positioning? Why not give the players some simple coaching points about what their team should do with and without the ball based on the opponent?
The games looked messy. In that moment, if someone dared to question the quality of the play — which I did — there would have to be a reflection on how the environment that the kids were put into was either helping them, or hurting their development. Educators do kids no favors when they throw them in the pool without any kind of guidance as to how they should float, let alone swim. If this isn’t a dialogue on justice, I don’t know what is.
I realized why my brother didn’t come back with me on the second day of this camp as I stood there watching. I started thinking about a proverb — one that my dad would tell me all the time — about a hungry man. ‘Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ How were these kids being fed for a lifetime? I couldn’t answer that question and I knew that the people running this camp couldn’t either.
If one of the main issues with youth soccer is its inaccessibility at the crossroads of race and class, then this issue is exacerbated when seemingly well-intentioned people show up in a community for a few days to hold a camp, take pictures and pass out t-shirts. They are not bad people. However, they are — like many others — misguided people. The disconnect was differentiating between charity and justice.
When I talked to the coaches who were running that camp, there was no indication that there would be any long-term project for working with the community that they were visiting. Let me be clear, this was not their responsibility alone in the Seattle and Washington soccer landscape, but I beg the question, who will step up? Who will make it clear that something needs to change in order to make club soccer more inclusive?
Clarity. There must be clarity. Why do we teach? Who are we teaching? What are we teaching? This is where we have to start if we are to create meaningful structures for children from all backgrounds. We cannot — figuratively and literally — just roll out the balls, take pictures and enjoy the weekend in the “poor, Black” neighborhood. We have to be more bold and inspired than that.
This idea about structure is especially pressing for Black and Brown kids who have historically been on the losing end of the conversation — and reality — of a lack of resources in their communities and schools. It takes on forms that many people — especially those who are privileged — do not even realize because they don’t experience it where they are from. Quality teaching, quality funding, quality school meals, quality after-school programming…QUALITY.
Don’t underestimate the Black and Brown kids. One of the biggest, and most racist misconceptions about youth achievement is that Black and Brown kids are less capable than their white counterparts. It comes down to resources. OF COURSE, schools with more money tend to do better than schools with less money. OF COURSE, schools with more after-school programs usually see fewer kids in trouble outside of school. OF COURSE, students with teachers that look like them have positive affirmations of self that often translate into more successful learning outcomes. OF COURSE, smaller class sizes mean more individual quality instruction for each student. OF COURSE, schools that provide quality free and reduced lunches for students that come from low-income — and often food-insecure homes — help students learn better throughout their school day. Skeptics and devil’s advocates do not need to take my word on these issues if you question my credentials or background; my ego can handle it. I am not one who studies these systems for a living. I am one who has lived inside of and been developed by — in some cases, in spite of — these systems, and that is where my knowledge comes from.
Quality.
I was so proud of my brother as he expanded The Rising Point in the form of programs before school, after school, and in the summer. When I came home from college during winter and summer breaks, I enjoyed helping provide a quality experience for kids who are often forgotten about and left to their own devices. I enjoyed being a part of that solution. Since then, we’ve seen a handful of these kids go on to college to study, some of them to play as well.
Don’t underestimate the Black and Brown kids. I was speaking to a friend the other day and she was writing a paper for a post-graduate course in Migration Studies. She recounted her experiences growing up with teachers who looked at her and her classmates — who were predominantly Latino — and assumed that they were incapable or disinterested in learning. Many of those students didn’t graduate from high school.
As educators (parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, etc.), we have to know and understand that kids are reflections and products of who we are and what we teach them. We can’t talk to and teach kids the same way, because they come from different backgrounds — Black and Brown kids specifically deal with a range of different traumas — which means that we have to do our homework and know why we teach, who we are teaching and how. Context matters.
Let me return to the conversation about soccer. If we are serious about equity and inclusion in the game, we have to open more pathways for kids of color to be involved in “premier” level soccer. Currently, there is a real problem that exists in regards to who can access competitive soccer avenues and if we are serious about justice — and are not merely distracted by charitable camps — we can push the paradigm so that more Black and Brown kids are playing.
Whether I am looking across fields at Starfire Sports Complex in Tukwila, Washington, or Ukrop Park in Richmond, Virginia, I see the same issue. I see a lack of diversity — among both coaches and players — that does not reflect the demographics of surrounding communities interested in the game. Talent supersedes race and class and our ability to recognize and understand this should drastically change how we organize leagues and clubs.
This goes beyond posting quotes on social media about “equality” every January during Martin Luther King Jr.’s national holiday — something that many organizations do out of routine — and is instead a call to action and a moment to reflect on who many of us supposedly claim to be: kind, open-minded and inclusive. We need to live by these ideas, rather than just talking about them if we are to reach kids that have consistently been left behind.
I am not telling anyone not to post about Martin Luther King Jr., rather, I am once again calling for us to reflect on what this individual stood for and how he lived to push for meaningful change for those burdened by the intersectional struggles of race and class. We cannot continue to use the image and symbol of Martin Luther King Jr. as an absent referent, meaning, that we separate the man from what he stood for.
This is what it means to celebrate, learn about and understand Black history 12 months out of the year. This is what it means to push for justice, even when many of us have become too accustomed and comfortable with acts of charity. This is what it means to empower and inspire Black and Brown children, who are beyond capable of becoming amazing contributors to our society and world, just like those before them.
Don’t underestimate the Black and Brown kids.
BLACK LIVES MATTER.
