Jun 10 2008
Church Ain’t the Only Segregated Thing on Sunday
I play tennis at Haines Point (East Potomac Park) every Sunday in a mixed doubles tennis league. And it struck me that church isn’t the only segregated event on Sundays in DC…..recreational sports are as well. I’ll use Haines Point as my primary example, because there are so many recreational activities going on there. I look around the tennis courts and match after match is white team vs. black team. Some teams choose to coordinate their clothing, but it seems like 90% of the individuals on any given team match in skin color. It’s amazing how this “throwback” to a previous era plays out in just about any recreational sports league in the area: soccer, softball, kickball, flag football, basketball, golf.
At Haines Point, I walk a few meters to the soccer field and find a similar scenario; Africans playing soccer, no one with a lighter hue in sight. I’ve been told there is a Nigerian soccer league in the area, and I assume many other types as well….Ethiopian, Ghanaian, Salvadorian, Mexican, Canadian, etc.
Venturing a few meters in the other direction, I survey the golf course where small groups trek the greens. Mostly men, but a few women and children, are decked out in full golfing attire. From afar these people dot the landscape…..a small brown group here, a white group there. It’s all so uniform.
For those who identify themselves as “unhyphenated” Americans, or just plain black, white (or purple), sports teams have a different way of obtaining similar homogeneous results. Simply name a sports team after a certain region and you know who’s going to be attracted to the team. ”Northern Virginia Tennis Take Over”, “Upper Marlboro Football Fanatics” “Bethesda Softball Steamrollers”….You name it and they’ll come. The meaning behind the terminology is unspoken but most people in the area know how it works.
I’ve been on tennis teams where someone is obviously new to the area and not aware these so-called keywords. They eagerly join the team only to realize they’re a minority on the playing field. Surprised and disappointed they either find an excuse to leave the team immediately (”Sorry, I’m not going to be able to play anymore. I have a scheduling conflict for the remainder of the season.”) Or they begrudgingly finish out the season, although clearly unhappy and feeling isolated.
With the demographics within the city limits changing, I suspect the recreational sports landscape will grow more segregated not less. People will find more creative code words and catch phrases other than names of neighborhoods to attract the people they want to compete with on the playing field. Sports teams are a microcosm of the communities in which we live. Remaining amongst ourselves we often find comfort and solace, but when excluding others we miss out on the wonderful cultural diversity this region provides.
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Phenomenal web site! I find your comments about team self-segregation interesting… I wonder, however, if there are differences in reaction to being the “minority” on the team. For example, is a purple person just as disappointed when they find themselves on a team of green people as a green person is when they end up on a team of purples? I also must say that this doesn’t seem to be an issue in NYC where I now reside. I think that is bc black people are not “expected” (by themselves or others) to play “white” sports. I play tennis too and when I lived in DC knew so many avid black tennis players. Now that I’m in NYC, many people find it odd that I play tennis and actually dont seem to believe me when I tell them about the popularity of the sport among black people in DC. Anyway, keep up the great work!