It’s Time to Get the ‘Race Thing’ Right

Okay. So a couple of buddies and I were wrapping up our night of tennis, standing outside the HEB Center just sort of shootin’ the bull. And, out of nowhere, a guy catches the attention of one of my friends and asks, “Are you playing tennis or basketball tonight?”

My friend is a tall black man, and his response was classier than mine would have been.

He just smiled and said, “Tennis all the way! Basketball sucks.”

Yes, it seems, black people DO play tennis. And many are quite good at it, believe it or not. Shockingly, not every tall black man spends all his free time on a basketball court. And, get this! I even know a couple of black guys who actually play golf quite well, too. Wow! Who would have figured?! (And no, one of them is not Tiger Woods.) And didn’t our Corpus Christi Ice Rays hockey team used to have a tall black guy a few years back? How did we all miss that?!

Oh yeah, and this is even more amazing: brown people with spanish accents play tennis too! I got my butt kicked by a couple of them just two nights ago, in fact. Yes. It’s true. They actually beat me in tennis, not soccer!

Several of the guys who are my fellow regulars on the city-owned tennis courts of Corpus Christi are my Facebook friends, and the idiot we ran into tonight has inspired me to give them a shout-out! I’m proud that the demographics of our little group are very similar to our city’s population. I just did an informal count in my head, and I think we have at least 10 countries, 5 languages, and 4 skin tones represented in the heritages of these guys.

Be careful everybody: that guy you think surely must play basketball, soccer or even cricket, may turn out to be a tennis guru after all.

It’s 2013! Can we finally start getting this race-thing right?

Tennis anyone?