Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-08-20, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2015. PAGE 5. Have you met my friend Roy? Roy G. Biv? If you’re a visual artist you probably know what I’m talking about. Mister Biv is not an actual person, he’s a mnemonic – a memory device to help artists remember the primary colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. All the colours of the rainbow. (They’re lined up in order of decreasing radio wavelengths if you want to get technical about it.) There are other ways of remembering the series. British art students with a sense of history memorized ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’. That works. But so does ‘Rinse Out Your Granny’s Boots in Vinegar’. Anyway you slice it, colour – and the way we view it – cuts to the very quick of our exis- tence. Ask Rachel Dolezal. She’s an American civil rights activist and former African Studies instructor. She’s also president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. Or was. She stepped down last month (just ahead of getting canned) because her cover was blown. For most of her adult life Rachel Dolezai has been pretending she was black. She coloured her skin and wore her hair in a succession of afros, dreadlocks and other funky formats. She even used her Facebook page to identify a black man, Alfred Wickerson junior, as her father. That was disturbing news to Mister Wickerson, who’d only met Rachel Dolezal a few months earlier. Her real father and mother, both white, ‘outed’ their daughter to the media as a black wannabe. Ms. Dolezai is unrepentant. “It’s taken my whole life to negotiate how to identify” she told a reporter. “I wouldn’t say I’m African- American but I would say that I’m black.” Except um...you’re not, Rachel. Race is not a matter of how one wishes to ‘identify’. A person can’t choose to be black just as one can’t choose to be white. Or Japanese or Maori or Woodland Cree or Innu. Me? I’d like to identify as a guy with hair like Jeff Bridges. Except I’m bald as an onion. It’s genetic. You is or you ain’t. As for being authentically black – even that gets complicated. When I was a kid the term used was ‘Negro’. That gave way to the expres- sion ‘coloured people’. Which morphed into ‘black’ which blossomed into ‘people of colour’. Nowadays, to use the term ‘coloured people’ is to reveal yourself as an uncultured hick with the social graces of a Mississippi redneck. Unless of course you’re talking about the N Double-A CP. The “CP” in the title stands for, yes, coloured people. As I said, it’s complicated. Personally, I think the cartoonist and poet Shel Silverstein (not Negro or coloured or ‘of colour’ or black) summed it up rather well: “My skin is kind of sort of brownish pinkish yellowish white” said Mister Silverstein. “My eyes are greyish blueish green, but I’m told they look orange in the night. My hair is reddish blondish brown, but it’s silver when it’s wet, and all the colours I am inside have not been invented yet.” Amen to that. As for me, I was bright pink at birth but that soon faded to ivory (except kind of dark beige in the summer). I have been known to turn green with envy, yellow with fear and red with anger. On a bad day I can get browned off or even downright blue. When bruised, I usually turn purple. I don’t have firsthand knowledge of my complexion following my demise but I have it on good authority that it will be an unpleasant grey. And I definitely identify with Black – every time I see my driver’s licence. If you want to talk about a person of colour, you’re reading his words right now. Hey, we’re all people of colour and I’m happy about that. Orange you? Arthur Black Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Many members of my generation may never get the opportunity to say the following words so, I guess, while I still can, I better enjoy it: I’m retiring. I’m not retiring from my job as a reporter here at The Citizen, I’m retiring from most of my involvement with North Huron Minor Soccer and Blyth Minor Soccer. This year I found myself donning the mantles of league convenor for the U18 (Under-18) Boys league, referee co-ordinator for Blyth and coach of Blyth’s U18 Girls team, while refereeing games myself when I could fit them in. I’m not complaining here, just admitting, that I’m 30 years old and having to worry about soccer every night when I literally have no skin in the game has gotten exhausting. Originally, I was just a referee. As a matter of fact, for 10 years, I was just a referee. Then I decided to take on the referee co-ordinator position here in Blyth. Then, this year, everything doubled and tripled. With a functioning executive of two, there was a lot of work and not many hands to manage it and it’s just not in me anymore. I’m not saying I’m completely done – I’ll likely still referee much to the chagrin of some local coaches – but coaching and executive positions are best left to the people who have a reason to keep coming back to it. Me? Well every time another call came in about someone not being able to referee, putting me in the position of giving up my own time to either referee the game or try and find a replacement, I wondered why I keep doing it. At first, it was because I thought things would be different. I thought I would schedule things, people would be glad to do it because (in all honesty) for the amount of work, the pay is pretty good, but that isn’t the case. People cancel, people don’t show up and, when that happens, it falls to me to fix it. If I had a 9-5 job (and don’t call those bankers’ hours, because I can tell you, bankers work longer hours than those now-a-days), I wouldn’t have a problem refereeing the occasional cancellation. Having the full-time job I have, however, requires me to be available on nights to take pictures, cover council meetings and attend events and, in all likelihood, if I’m not already refereeing a game, I’m likely otherwise occupied. Again, this isn’t complaining, this is just saying that doing the things I’ve listed (running a league, organizing referees, refereeing or coaching teams) are not horrible experiences, they are just experiences that are better suited to someone who has a steady schedule, someone who can be home between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. and occasionally handle putting out a fire on a weeknight (like once a week, or so). It’s nothing to be scared of, really, because nothing is going to happen a person can’t handle, provided they have the time to dedicate to it. Those positions are also things that should be handled by someone who has a reason to do them: someone who is supporting one of the athletes. I’m not saying parents here, it could be anyone: a family member like an uncle or aunt, a friend of the family, a member of a church, anyone really. Me? I just don’t really have any connections like that. I happened to be the oldest referee in town when I moved here and handling the other referees sort of fell into my lap. Like I said, it’s not a tough job, just one for someone with a little more free time than your friendly neighbourhood reporter. Also one for someone who doesn’t mind being called in the middle of the day to try and resolve issues. Also someone who has time in the middle of the day to go through dozens of e-mails and make sure that none of them require their attention. Okay, so it is a bit of a taxing thing to be involved with, but, in the end, it’s probably going to be worthwhile. So, next year, when it’s time for soccer sign- ups, drop by the registration table and say you’re willing to lend a hand. Judging by the number of people who criticize referees from the sideline during Blyth games, there must be at least a dozen people with enough time on their hands to actually get involved. Or, if you’re going to get involved, don’t disappear right after the season starts. If you say you’re going to help, do it. Volunteer burnout is a real thing and the number one cause of it, in my experience, is the handful of dedicated people saying they will help alongside a bunch more who disappear as soon as they have signed their names. That’s why many service groups and community groups in the area end up being pushed by two or three people year after year. As for me, I might referee a game or two a week and help out with whatever final tournament does get held in Blyth, but, as my final, last-ditch effort to help out Blyth Minor Soccer, I’m putting a challenge out there. It shouldn’t fall to people already involved to take on more responsibilities. If someone you know is playing soccer and you are going to take the time to go out and watch them anyway, be a coach. It’s usually not a problem with the younger teams and, to be honest, with the older teams, the players have spent a lot of time with each other and know the strengths and weaknesses of their teammates. They don’t need a lot of guidance, just someone to help keep them on track. The last part of the challenge is to pick up a whistle. If you think you can do a better job refereeing than any of the people who go out and put up with the nonsense that referees face, grab a whistle and prove it. If you decide that refereeing isn’t for you, however, please keep your opinions to yourself because the worst thing about finding referees is the turnover rate. So many are scared away by overzealous coaches and parents that it typically falls to a core group to referee almost every game in a community. So, it is with no reservations whatsoever that I finally say, I’m retired. Denny Scott Denny’s Den Predictable sexism Some things in this world are so painfully predictable it’s scary. And usually when someone says something like that, it’s something bad, so let’s get to it. In this day and age, when so many things have been accomplished by so many different types of people, I think it’s conveniently forgotten sometimes what it takes to be a trailblazer. I believe I’ve written about this before, but to be in Cooperstown, New York at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and to see handwritten letters sent to the likes of Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson full of hate and death threats, it really hits the point home about how hard it would have been decades ago to simply have the courage to play baseball in a league that hadn’t, until then, welcomed your people. As I’ve said, so many walls have been broken down since then, it’s easy to remember that many walls remain up, until someone is brave enough or talented enough to break them down. This has happened twice in the National Football League (NFL) in recent memory. There is the case of the Sarah Thomas, who is the league’s first full-time female referee and now with Jen Welter, who is, albeit in a limited capacity, the NFL’s first female coach. There was a meeting of these two strong women the other night as the league’s Arizona Cardinals, the team Welter coaches, took on the Kansas City Chiefs in a preseason game refereed by Thomas. Back to the predictability... there were plenty of people who weren’t quite as thrilled about the whole thing as the two women no doubt were. A picture shared by American sports network ESPN of the two women shaking hands was met with all types of sexism on Twitter, which has become a haven for these kinds of things. One user disgustingly suggested that the two were “probably talking about feminism” while another suggested that the University of Phoenix Stadium, where the game was played was a “weird kitchen” for the two women to be in. One man suggested that the meeting of the two women would result in the world of professional sports being ruined before his very eyes, while another said where was disgraced former NFL running back and wife beater Ray Rice when you needed him? Disgusting. But again, no one is likely surprised. It’s just unfortunate that such an important moment for women in sports, as well as in these two women’s lives, has to be marred by closed-minded people attempting to stifle progress in the world. Just when you think that humans have explored every sea and scaled every mountain, you have to remember that there are still people out there who are doing things that no one before them, in years and years of civilization, has done before – and that can’t be diminished simply because there are fewer and fewer of these milestones to mark. People are still making news and breaking records every day and it isn’t any easier for them. So perhaps the onus is on us to celebrate these trailblazers and do our best to drown out the sexist and the racist so their voice is reduced to a whisper. The unfortunate thing, though, is that bigots will always be there. Negativity will always be a part of moments such as these. It’s too bad, but it’s a part of life that I think many of us have grown to begrudgingly accept. Other Views It’s not black and white You are never too young to retire