{"id":19174,"date":"2021-03-15T19:14:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T19:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoklahomaeagle.net\/?p=19174"},"modified":"2021-03-15T19:14:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T19:14:24","slug":"the-announcer-who-blamed-his-racism-on-diabetes-thats-the-oklahoma-i-grew-up-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/2021\/03\/15\/the-announcer-who-blamed-his-racism-on-diabetes-thats-the-oklahoma-i-grew-up-in\/","title":{"rendered":"The Announcer Who Blamed His Racism On Diabetes? That’s The Oklahoma I Grew Up In"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

By Etan Thomas<\/a><\/i><\/div>\n
\n 
\n 
\nThe broadcaster caught directing the N-word at a girls\u2019 team dredges up memories of the racism I experienced as a young player in Tulsa. But what happened the next day gives me hope.<\/em>\n<\/div>\n

Back in 1996, my Booker T Washington High School team beat Norman High in the\u00a0Oklahoma<\/a>\u00a0state tournament final to seal back-to-back state championships.<\/p>\n

\nWhat I remember most about it years later was an incident with some of the Norman fans after the game as I was leaving the arena on the campus of Oral Roberts University, where the tournament was held. These guys weren\u2019t mad about losing the championship. They were mad that I had done the Black Power salute during the national anthem before it started.
\nSee, while in high school, I discovered the third verse of the Star-Spangled Banner that had later been omitted from the song we sing today. It read:
\nNo refuge could save the hireling and slave<\/em>
\nFrom the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,<\/em>
\nAnd the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave<\/em>
\nO\u2019er the land of the free and the home of the brave.<\/em>
\nSince learning that, I always felt offended whenever I would hear the anthem played. All I could hear was that third verse. I wondered why they used a song that has something so evil in it? Why couldn\u2019t they just create a whole new song?
\nBy then I had also learned about\u00a0John Carlos and Tommie Smith<\/a>, who had the courage to stand on the podium at the 1968 Olympics and perform the Black Power salute in front of the entire world. So from that moment on, whenever the anthem was played before our games, I would use the Black Power salute to make a statement against that third verse in particular, which didn\u2019t go over too well in Oklahoma. Those fans from Norman didn\u2019t appreciate it either.
\nI will never forget the anger, hatred and evil in their faces. I remember their venom as they shouted: \u201cWho the hell did you think you are to disrespect\u00a0our<\/em>\u00a0country?\u201d
\nI can also remember the university\u2019s security guards coming over to break up the situation, only to ask me \u201cIs everything OK here?\u201d and looking at me as if I was the one starting trouble.
\nThat incident was the first thing I thought about when I saw the now-viral video of Matt Rowan, the announcer who made headlines on Friday after a\u00a0hot mic caught him using the N-word<\/a>\u00a0toward the Norman girls\u2019 basketball team as they knelt before the national anthem. (It should be noted that his broadcast partner Scott Sapulpa, the head football coach at Hulbert High School in northeast Oklahoma, could not be heard objecting to Rowan\u2019s language.)
\nDid it surprise me? Not at all. It was, however, shocking to hear Rowan blame his comments on his \u201cspiking sugar levels\u201d in his\u00a0official statement<\/a>. I wasn\u2019t aware that racism was a side effect of diabetes.
\nBut from my own experiences growing up in Tulsa and playing in all those towns outside the city where there were hardly any Black people, I have heard much worse from crowds. There were times it felt like a scene from\u00a0the movie Glory Road<\/a>, only this wasn\u2019t the 1960s: we won our consecutive state titles in 1995 and 1996. What people don\u2019t understand is the emotional toll that volume of hatred being hurled at you can take.
\nOn my show\u00a0The Rematch<\/a>. I interviewed Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who was in essence\u00a0Kaepernick before Kaepernick<\/a>. He was infamously white-balled from the NBA after he caused a stir with his public stance on the national anthem. One of the topics we discussed was the evil and hatred that he experienced when he chose to silently pray during the anthem rather than stand.
\n\u201cI ended up having to go to the hospital twice because I\u2019m trying to process it and I\u2019m listening to all of these diatribes and epithets being used against me every game and through hate mail,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m processing everything and in the process, I had to be admitted to the hospital twice, because I had ulcers and they had to put IVs in me and everything. The anger and hate that was constantly being thrown at me took a toll on me both mentally and physically.\u201d
\nNo one should be subjected to that type of torment as a result of a peaceful demonstration, regardless of what the opposition feels about it.
\nThe bright spot in all of this was the solidarity exhibited by the other teams in the Oklahoma state tournament. Most notably, Norman\u2019s next opponent, Union High School, whose players all took a knee alongside Norman before Friday\u2019s semi-final. That included all of Union\u2019s white players.
\nThat for me shows hope. The ugly racial past and present of Tulsa can never be forgotten: from the\u00a0Tulsa Race Massacre<\/a>\u00a0and torching of Black Wall Street, to police officer\u00a0Betty Shelby<\/a>\u00a0killing Terence Crutcher and getting away with it, to the vitriolic images of Trump supporters outside his rallies during the 2016 campaign (at the Mabee Center where I was harassed), to Trump\u2019s\u00a0super-spreader Juneteenth rally<\/a>\u00a0last summer at the Bok Center downtown, to Friday\u2019s video broadcasting a moment of hate to the entire world. But to see Black and white high school girls taking a knee together in defiance of hate is enough to make me believe in a better tomorrow.
\n 
\n \n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

www.theguardian.com By Etan Thomas     The broadcaster caught directing the N-word at a girls\u2019 team dredges up memories of the racism I experienced as a young player in Tulsa. But what happened the next day gives me hope. Back in 1996, my Booker T Washington High School team beat Norman High in the\u00a0Oklahoma\u00a0state tournament…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,103,105],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-19174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","category-featured","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19174"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=19174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}