DeWayne’s Story
DeWayne Carter
Growing up, I was blessed to live in a good household. I have two supportive parents, a younger sister, and I was grateful that we all lived in the same home. My sister and I were very active kids, and this worked out very well because the kids in our neighborhood loved to play outside as well. In our neighborhood, we played every sport you could imagine; from rugby to football to the Tour de France around the neighborhood. I had a great childhood.
My parents both played sports growing up. My mother played basketball and softball, and my father played football, basketball, and baseball. My mother’s athletic career lasted through high school, and my father went on to play football at The Ohio State University. My dad was not the only athlete to play in college on his side of the family, his two brothers and his father also played football at the collegiate level. My uncle Raymond played football for Notre Dame, my uncle John played at Western Kentucky, and my grandpa Raymond Sr. played at Youngstown State where he was inducted into the hall of fame. It was almost inevitable that my sister and I would eventually become athletes. Growing up, my parents put us in as many sports as they could. Combined, we played football, baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, gymnastics, and golf. I loved every sport that I played, but eventually I had to cut some out. Although soccer was my first love, I chose to focus on football and baseball to try and earn a college scholarship. By the grace of God and hard work, I was lucky enough to have multiple scholarship offers; and I was able to choose where I went to college.
When I played travel baseball, there was not a lot of black representation in the sport. I was always one of two or three black kids on whatever team that I was playing on. This one year I was playing on a team, and my three coaches were all black men. I was the only black player, so every time we would travel to tournaments, different games people would ask me “Is that your dad?”, or “Is that your uncle?” The underrepresentation of black people in baseball has created the stigma that black people do not play baseball, or that the only way that black people play baseball is if their family member is a part of the staff. I would get asked those questions at least once every weekend, and all people had to do was look down the outfield lines or up in the stands and see both of my black parents. I felt that it was pretty obvious that they were my parents, but also wondered why it mattered what my relationship to the coach was. My white teammates were never asked those questions, no matter what team I was on.
My next story took place during my junior year of high school on my school baseball team. This team was very diverse. We were about 50% white and 50% black and all but two starters were black on the team. Every year our coach would take us on a spring trip to start the season, and this year we went to a part of Georgia that is not welcoming to people of color. After our last game, the head coach of the other team went up to my coach and said to him “you’ve done a good job with those boys.” My coach loved us, and he was furious when their coach felt the need to say that to him. The first thing he did was get us together as a team, and he let us know how wrong the other coach was. He told us that we were much more than our skin color, and he reaffirmed my prior feelings about how great of a man that he was.
Racial equality to me means that everyone gets a fair chance without inequity. Racial equality does not mean that black people get a headstart, it means that we get an even playing field. Racial equality is when we do not worry about biases, stereotypes, stigmas, or anything that stunts our growth or prohibits us from advancing in the world as a group.