I came across this site by accident, but I find this topic very interesting since I have lived it. I was a white defensive back in college back in the late 1980's. Like many white defensive backs, I was not recruited by any Div 1 schools in high school, but my dream was to play football at Texas A&M, so I walked on and made the team. I played three years at A&M and letter one year, mostly as a special teams player. I consistently ran the 40 under 4.5 sec and was considered the "fastest white guy on the team". It is amazing how people throw around 40 times. You hear about all of these 4.4 guys, but in reality they are probably 4.5-4.6 guys. There are probably only a handful of 4.4 guys on any Div 1 football team. On our team, there were only three guys that could beat me in a 40 yd dash.
Growing up in football crazy state like Texas, you can see the white racism on a regular basis. I too was brainwashed growing up thinking that only black guys were fast enough to run sprints in track and play defensive back. My mind was changed during my freshman year in high school when a family friend told me about him running the 100 yd dash for the Univ. of Texas back in the 1960's. He said that he used to run the 100 in 9.3 sec and that most of sprinters back then were white. He gave me the belief that if I worked hard, I could be a defensive back in college. Throughout my football days, I came across people that perpetuated these stereotypes.
I am 37 years old now and have debates with colleagues about the superiority of black athletes vs white athletes. Most believe the stereotypes that all black people run faster and jump higher. To make my point, I asked them to choose any black person that they personally know, and I will challenge them to a foot race. If they win, I will concede that blacks are superior athletes. Usually that shuts them up because they know, at 37, that I can still run pretty damn fast.
Growing up in football crazy state like Texas, you can see the white racism on a regular basis. I too was brainwashed growing up thinking that only black guys were fast enough to run sprints in track and play defensive back. My mind was changed during my freshman year in high school when a family friend told me about him running the 100 yd dash for the Univ. of Texas back in the 1960's. He said that he used to run the 100 in 9.3 sec and that most of sprinters back then were white. He gave me the belief that if I worked hard, I could be a defensive back in college. Throughout my football days, I came across people that perpetuated these stereotypes.
I am 37 years old now and have debates with colleagues about the superiority of black athletes vs white athletes. Most believe the stereotypes that all black people run faster and jump higher. To make my point, I asked them to choose any black person that they personally know, and I will challenge them to a foot race. If they win, I will concede that blacks are superior athletes. Usually that shuts them up because they know, at 37, that I can still run pretty damn fast.
