College basketball coaches discuss racism, diversity
Coaches’ federation has proposed list of suggested actions
Frank Martin remembers the day 22 years ago when he was stopped by a police officer when he was driving across the country from his home in Miami to help coach a youth basketball camp.
“An officer walked up to my window and asked, ‘What’s a guy from your neck of the woods doing up here, like real sarcastically,” the South Carolina coach recalled. “My proper name is Francisco, middle name Jose. He starts making fun of how to enunciate my name. And he said, ‘You’re one of those banana boat guys down there where you’re from,’ so right that moment I was kind of like, trying to figure out how to handle that moment. Common sense said, ‘Frank, defuse.’”
It wasn’t the first time Martin experienced racism. It wouldn’t be the last. But it left such an indelible impression on him that all these years later, it was among the first things that came to mind when he saw a video of a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd as the black man pleaded for help with his final breaths.
And it’s why Martin, the son of Cuban political exiles and the first of his family born in the U.S., is joining dozens of other basketball coaches to discuss issues of race and discrimination amid the social unrest that has gripped the nation.
The NABC has already released a list of recommendations for college coaches. Among the suggestions are holding in-person or virtual meetings to discuss current events and racial injustice; establishing Election Day as an annual team day off and helping student-athletes register to vote; holding inperson and virtual meetings with local law enforcement and community leaders; and encouraging teams to be advocates on campus and society in general.
The discussion Friday came the same day Texas State ordered an investigation into a former player’s allegations of racist remarks by basketball coach Danny Kaspar — allegations athletic director Larry Teis called “deeply troubling.”
“I think we’re all basically going to be affected by this similarly,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “This has motivated me to hug my players. Hug my family. Take care of them, but also give them a platform. I gave all our kids a platform to share stories and their feelings, and I think that’s a positive that has come out of that.”
Sampson was born in Laurinburg, North Carolina, in 1955. It was an era in which discrimination was still rampant across the country, but especially in the South, and nearly a decade before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The things Sampson saw as a child came f looding back when he saw the video from Minneapolis.
“To me, he might as well have had a pillowcase over his head with his eyes dotted out and his nose dotted out,” Sampson said. “It just brought back memories of thekukluxklanfromthe ‘50s and ‘60s.”
Longtime basketball coach Ernie Kent remembered being stuck in the back of a police car as a 9-year-old and driven around the block so that a white woman could tell an officer whether he had stolen her purse. Kent was heartened, though, when he spent Thursday at a march in Oregon.
“Ninety-five percent of them were white and young,” Kent said.