Can’t Hurt Me_ Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

My only saving grace that week was getting back with Johnny Nichols. We’d
stayed close while I was away and our marathon one-on-one battles were back
on full swing. Though he was undersized, he was always a nice player and he
was one of the best on the floor during tryouts. He was draining shots, seeing the
open man, and running the court. It was no surprise when he made the varsity
squad, but we were both shocked that I barely made JV.
I was crushed. And not because of basketball tryouts. To me that outcome was
another symptom of something else I’d been feeling. Brazil looked the same, but
shit felt different this time around. Grade school had been hard academically, but
even though we were one of only a few black families in town, I didn’t notice or
feel any palpable racism. As a teenager I experienced it everywhere, and it
wasn’t because I’d become ultra sensitive. Outright racism had always been
there.
Not long after moving back to Brazil, my cousin Damien and I went to a party
way out in the country. We stayed out well past curfew. In fact, we were up all
night long, and after daybreak we called our grandmother for a ride home.
“Excuse me?” She asked. “You disobeyed me, so you may as well start
walking.”
Roger that.
She lived ten miles away, down a long country road, but we joked around and
enjoyed ourselves as we started to stroll. Damien lived in Indianapolis and we
were both sagging our baggy jeans and dressed in oversized Starter jackets, not
exactly typical gear on Brazil’s country roads. We’d walked seven miles in a few
hours when a pick-up truck came bouncing down the tarmac in our direction. We
edged to the side of the road to let it pass, but it slowed down, and as it crept past
us, we could see two teenagers in the cab and a third standing in the bed of the
truck. The passenger pointed and yelled through his open window.
“Niggers!”
We didn’t overreact. We put our heads down and kept walking at the same pace,
until we heard that beat-to-shit truck squeal to a stop on a patch of gravel, and
kick up a dust storm. That’s when I turned and saw the passenger, a scruffy