I was born and raised in a small suburb east of a major southern California city. I went to the local Catholic school and had the standard blue-collar, lower middle-class childhood. My only significant experiences with black people were during Pop Warner football games, when our team traveled to the “urban” parts of the city. What I remember most was the awful condition of the “field.” Hardly a blade of grass lived on the gridiron, and the yard markers were upturned plastic waste baskets with the yard lines spray painted on them.
Our black opponents would intimidate us by their noticeably larger size and by warming up with thigh-pad-slapping pre-game chants. The shouting and hollering were nothing any of us had ever seen before. I remember their imposing size and demeanor almost as much as I remember the spitting, pinching, and groin punching in the scrums after a play.
In what was perhaps a peace offering on my part, I remember picking up the loose helmet of one of my imposingly large opponents and handing it to him. The inside was greased up to the point that I could barely get a grip on it. I was unfamiliar with the black ritual of applying chemical straightener to hair. I could see the boy’s shiny hair under the clear shower cap they all seemed to wear beneath their helmets. That was my first real experience with blacks. ...
https://www.amren.com/features/2020/07/my-career-as-a-white-police-officer/
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