The Great Unravelling – the road from trauma to healing
Mario Bonas
In the last year of travel basketball my daughter participated in before the lock down of CO-VID 19, her team had benefited from an overachieving year contrary to previous years of relegation. They were consequently rewarded by being promoted to a higher seeded division. As tournament match- ups were decided and assigned we were all too pleased to be facing a team that had embarrassed us in all of the previous match-ups. An east Toronto team (who will remain nameless) comprised primarily of mostly black young girls (descendants of Caribbean and African immigrants) under 15 of age, like most teams from that area were again highly favored. I assumed, they were anticipating to easily run rough shot on us once more. Unfortunately, fate had other plans and we all knew quite early in this game that this bruising east side team would be finally humbled.
My daughter’s team the Tecumseh Saints, has always been an unassuming moderately diverse team of hard-working, close-knit girls, well coached but routinely underachieving. I will be considerate and spare you the play-by-play details but I will proudly state that our team had their way in every facet of this game from the jump. In front of an auditorium filled with many impassioned parents, they were out rebounded, out scored and out hustled. With frustration mounting and over aggressiveness they found themselves in early foul trouble and their confidence began to slowly wane. Even their star player who was normally the best ball handler and shooter on the court was overcome with discouragement and struggled to get her team going. And with their diminishing swagger they were unable to display the same vainglory they were known for and our team’s tenacity grew exponentially. It was at this moment the trajectory of this contest took an unusual turn.
At a critical point in the game after a hard foul, one of their girls went down. Hard.
This provoked their parents to leap to their feet vociferously calling for a more punitive response
from the referees. Now, if you have been to youth sporting events especially in the Toronto area you will know that they can vary from stodgy, dozy experiences to wildly toxic environments. And at times the reputation of a team can be preceded by their adherence to strict discipline and sportsmanship or conversely, badmouthing, critiquing and overbearing parents and coaching. It may be worth mentioning the demographics of these crowds as divided customarily by predominantly black parents on one side and predominantly white on the other side – a familiar setting to hoop parents around the province I’m sure. The atmosphere was intense to say the least but what came next would be akin to discarding a lit cigarette onto the dry flammable undergrowth in a wooded forest.
After a few moments of concern for the young athlete who rolled writhing in pain momentarily, the tensions increased as their coach berated the referees about the potential flagrance of our players. This was excessive but otherwise a normal coaching strategy known as “working the referees” for a more favorable, equalizing call later in the game. And after the injured player was escorted to their bench the coach erupted once again in protest to another undisclosed violation. Literally, adding insult to injury the coach stated that a racial slur was uttered towards the ailing player by one of our players. Their respective coach, maybe in a desperate attempt to distract from his own bruised ego as well as the behinds of his losing team, loudly proclaimed that one of our players called his player the N-word! And just like that, the utterance of one word was like pulling the pin from a hand grenade and strategically rolling it to center court.
Parents tripped over themselves to escape their bleacher seats in a spittle ridden rage as they shouted at each other, at the coaches and at the players. As bedlam ensued the tournament convenor unsuccessfully attempted to restore order by threatening to remove belligerent fans to continue the game. Our coach, blindsided and flabbergasted could barely be heard over the chaos, vehemently denying the accusations as the referees, overwhelmed and intimidated by the threatening fans, walked off the floor in defeat. Despite being awarded the win by default the coaches from the other team made a formal complaint to the league officials, demanded the alleged player be reprimanded and requested a formal investigation into the matter.
In the face of all this acrimony I couldn’t help but feel this was a harbinger of the climate we see
growing in today’s modern society. As a former coach I am always disappointed when I see parents serving as a poor example to their children by breaking the rules of sportsmanship, interrupting the tenets of team work and working together towards a common goal. Athletic competition is supposed to be an escape from the real world, away from the perceptions, stereotypes and inequalities. Sports creates a space with specific rules and limitations. Within it athletes can apply and exercise their skill, exert their will and experience the magic of team chemistry as they feel the thrill of victory or the lessons of defeat. Here they can escape the blurry lines of the real world to win or achieve certain goals inside of structured frame work. What I occurred was assuredly was not the result of helicopter parenting or parents eager to protect and nurture their kids.
As I see it, this situation can be regarded as an encapsulation on a smaller scale, the qualities or features of something much larger but equally sinister. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a
microcosm, quite elegantly as “a little world; a community or other unity that is an epitome of a
larger unity.” This larger unity, I feel, is simply based on a bad idea. That idea being the one that
has been carefully practiced and nurtured to a fervent religious pitch I might add, that race is a
major problem in the lives of blacks of various nationalities in today’s society. The idea presupposes
that all authority should be questioned and indulges in a mindset that black lives, are subject to a
different set of rules based on the real and factual history of discrimination. As a group we (as
blacks) have arguably under functioned in passing through the generations many fundamental
positive habits that will change the mindsets and outcomes for our youth. However we have over
functioned in this area of passing on to our children the zealotry of racial discrimination and
injustice.
In an Atlantic magazine article author John McWhorter writes about the problems of this antiracism sentiment. He writes, “Third-wave antiracism is a call to enshrine defeatism, hypersensitivity, oversimplification, and even a degree of performance.” He managed to capture in these words what happens quite regularly in black culture where ideas about how we (as blacks) interconnect with the world remain firmly as entrenched oversimplifications of reality. Blacks as a group are noticeably twitchy when dealing with race related topics and respond too often in old ways that seem to caricaturize stereotypes of themselves. Allow me to explain. Individuals do many bad things when under duress. And in this particular case we are talking about the most precious commodity in the lives of most people – their children. I am neither praising nor blaming these parents. I get it. I would argue that this is not an indictment against the character of the actions of these parents. The blame lies elsewhere and everywhere. However we should be mindful of the message we are sending to our children. In their new book, The Coddling of the American Mind Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt discuss modern antiracism and its guiding tenets. The one that I found most profound was ‘What won’t kill you makes you weaker”. On the surface this echoes the old adage that hardships and struggles builds character and makes you tougher. To an extent this is partially true. What is more true is that love and affection really make you stronger and I am sure those parents in that gym a couple years ago were operating under that same belief.
However the flip side also suggests that when relatively innocuous circumstances arise, (like hearing the whispers of racial hatred) we may over react or become hypersensitive or maybe triggered by the thought that our safety is in danger. And no, my point here is not to stir alarm about the
misperceptions of blacks or a repudiation to the cry of racial injustice. But instead I would ask the question, what is really happening here? I don’t want to overlook the obvious pathos that lies at the heart of these contentious matters: trauma.
Let’s be clear. I remain firm in my belief that blacks need to continue on the path of being
personally responsible for their own lives and that success can be won by avoiding traditional tropes of victimhood and racial injustice. But a feeling is a feeling. And not enough has been mentioned about the trauma that blacks have endured, passed down and what’s worse, relived by their descendants who have been far removed from any real danger associated with racism. I can speak to this personally too. As a child it was quite traumatic learning about what “blackness” was in its historical context. However quietly, it changed me. If we include the well documented cacophony of historically oppressive events that have been taught and retaught by our parents, relatives and commercialized by a movie industry narrative, for some blacks within the group it maybe a struggle to cope and find constructive ways to deal with their emotions as it relates to their complicated racial heritage. I’m sure these teachings have changed them too.
We are all familiar with the growing studies on the effects of trauma through distressing events like rape, violence, accidents, war or natural disasters that interfere with a person’s ability to process these events, manage their emotions and move on with their lives. So many blacks today may be reacting to trauma that may not have necessarily endured personally but experienced is it was transferred generationally. Trauma may cause one to see danger that isn’t there or overreact to stimulus that is benign in nature - much like those parents whose rabid temperament flared impetuously that day. While it maybe difficult to quantify real dangers that exist today in regards to racism it is hard to deny the ghostly origins that linger as vestiges of the past in the minds of many blacks today.
So what does personal responsibility have to do with trauma? You can’t have personal responsibility if you're not aware of the things that you’re responsible for – the effects of your own trauma. Personal responsibility first starts with recognizing your own trauma. A failure to do this may result in the behaviours much like what McWhorter mentioned earlier when he described cases of an abnormal sensitivity to racial issues, a distortion of facts that leads to misunderstanding, and over reacting to situations that seem to remind us of lurid exaggerations of the group’s stereotypes. We can compound these problems when acting from a traumatized mind-set by normalizing a culture of reacting and not acting. In life it is hard enough controlling ones own impulses but when one cultivates a mental attitude or inclination that is prone to arise from impulse, decisions may have destructive consequences. We can then send the wrong message to our youth when we implicitly suggest that when life presents obstacles it’s easier to throw a temper tantrum and demand that the rules be changed, or the game be stopped or the standards lowered or that the powers at be are investigated. It acts as a distraction to our own goals and pursuits and derails development in other areas where the real paths to self determination and agency lie.
As for that basketball game, there were no findings of impropriety or conduct unbecoming after a short investigation by the league officials and coaches. However we missed an opportunity in a real life scenario where we ought to have reinforced the lessons of personal responsibility and impulse control. In the real world there are no times outs and the game doesn’t stop even when you cry foul.
Comments