I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It by Charles Barkley Read Free Book Online

friends are of different races that they aren’t natural enemies, even though we grew up in the midst of all that tension. We had to be taught that BS at some point. Put a little black kid and a little white kid in a room and all they’re going to do, before their minds are polluted with a bunch of BS, is play with each other. That’s all that’s going to happen whether those two little kids are put in a room in Alabama or New York or wherever.
    And to me, that’s the proof of just how unnatural prejudice and racism are. It ain’t something natural; you have to be taught it. How sick is that? You go from being naive as hell to having all this tension by the time you’re a teenager. It’s learned behavior, it ain’t something you’re born with. It just makes me sad, that ultimately people teach young people to dislike other people because of the color of their skin. And we do this generation after generation after generation. A lot of people reject that shit and they befriend who they want to and associate with who they want to and date who they want to. But everybody ain’t that strong, to break away from the stuff they’ve been taught.
    A whole lot of kids are brainwashed and get fanatical with the stuff they get from adults. You’ve got all these militia groups talking about being mad at the government. About what? Man, if black people aren’t mad at the government for our condition, then who has the right to be mad at the government? What, these militia guys aren’t getting a fair shake?
    I don’t want to make it sound like it’s simple, because I know it’s complex. Economics is involved. Poor white people and poor black people have been pitted against each other, even though they have more in common than not. A lot of rich white people will treat you fine, invite you to play golf, pay hardly any attention to race—either it’s that or they don’t want you to know how much they notice. But you go out to a bar with a redneck and he’ll call you “nigger” in a minute, and mean it. I go to a bar in a redneck area down near where I’m from in Alabama and you can feel what I call “nigga-tension.” Poor white people do that. To me, that’s some seriously misdirected anger, because poor white people and poor black people just don’t know how much they have in common. Rich people don’t give a damn about either group.
    But I’m not about to sit here and tell you I only experienced prejudice and racism in the south, although it did seem more in the open. I left Auburn after three years there and was drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers in June of 1984. Trust me, I’ve had plenty of episodes as an adult in northern cities. I got pulled over when I was behind the wheel of a Porsche in Philly once for what we call DWB—Driving While Black. People ask me all the time about growing up in Alabama, and no question there was racial tension all the time, but in certain parts of Philly sometimes you feel like you’re being subjected to the Klan without the sheets. It’s prejudice that’s expressed in more subtle ways. You don’t get hit over the head with it in the same way. And you don’t find as many situations where people come right out and say what’s really on their minds. For example, I thought much of the news media in Philly exhibited characteristics of racism.
    I would be asked a question after a loss or in the middle of a bad stretch about the 76ers’ chances of seriously contending that year or making a run in the playoffs. And I would say, “Our team isn’t good enough,” or “We’ve got to get better in certain areas if we’re going to compete at the championship level.” I guess I could have tiptoed around it and given some vanilla answer, but that’s not me. And besides, I was asked a question and I was assessing the situation as I saw it. The headlines the next day would say, “BARKLEY BLASTS TEAMMATES!” But I’d read similar comments from Lenny Dykstra or Darren Daulton