Soccer...Just Like Home
Recently, I went for a run; I love running through my neighborhood. My path takes me down a residential street that ends at a park. After about one and a half miles I am in the middle of beautiful greenery on a paved path. Usually, I don’t hear much besides the outdoors. My mind can clear itself and my thoughts can float freely.
Along the path, I pass soccer fields, skate parks, and basketball courts. During this run there was a soccer match going on; it was mostly Latino men playing. I looked over as I ran and could see brown skin running down the dusty field, and hear exclamations in Spanish. For a moment, I was transformed. Having traveled to Mexico, Ecuador and other Spanish speaking places, this scene reminded me of what I have experienced when I have traveled. As a matter of fact, there was nothing in my quick snapshot that would indicate that I was near my home.
I continued my run, and my thoughts continued to float: “It must be nice to have a taste of home, in a place that may be new to you.” A gross assumption for sure, however, a thought and sentiment that permeates many communities of people as they migrate to new places. Simply, a soccer game on a dusty field can take a person back home.
Photo Credit: Unsplash - piensaenpixel ©
A pressing question among education leaders is why don’t racial minorities participate in the same activities at the same rates as their White peers. While I think the literature addresses this question sufficiently, seeing the soccer game on my run provided me with another lens.
For many historically underrepresented students, studying on college campuses or attending elite schools is like traveling to a new place. To some, these collections of buildings is “just where eduction happens,” but to marginalized students, this space can be different and foreign. When given the option on a college campus, some marginalized students – particularly students of color – move into the spaces that are familiar and comfortable to them. Spaces that remind them of home.
Beverly Daniel Tatum addresses this idea in Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? In her book, Tatum explains the racial dynamics that underpin self segregation. Tatum (1997) shares that “we need to understand that in racially mixed settings, racial grouping is a developmental process in response to an environmental stressor, racism” (p. 62).
Of course, if your home resembled all of things that your college campus has – including the people – then you would feel really comfortable. Navigating the space would not be a chore or stressor, rather the skills you learned at home could be applied very easily. These skills, social and cultural capital, are significant factors in understanding how and why students move through the academy differently.
College campuses are designed with a particular social and cultural capital in mind. Students without this capital, usually historically underrepresented students, struggle because campuses don’t value what these students bring in the same way. While historically underrepresented students are no less prepared to navigate college campuses socially, their tools and resources don’t seem as useful.
Given this, it makes a lot of sense why a student would choose spaces and also people to engage that make use of and appreciate the tools and resources that they bring. It’s more than logical that a student would search for an environment within a college campus where their speech, style, and perspective are viewed as value-added and significant. In charting my own path as a practitioner, I know spaces like these are rare on college campuses, and students search long and hard to find them.
Simply, soccer is a metaphor for the space that so many students, especially historically underrepresented students, need on campuses to feel whole. Their desire to have these spaces is not necessarily to be exclusive of others, rather it is to be inclusive of themselves. To pull back from the margins and be complete. So, please let them play soccer. Often they don’t need an indoor turf field, the dusty, patch green grass with metal goal posts works just fine.
Domonic Rollins
Tatum, B. D. (2003). “Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?”: And other conversations about race. New York: Basic Books.