In the wake of George Floyd’s tragic death, Golfweek reached out to a wide-ranging group of thoughtful individuals within the golf industry to further the dialogue about racial injustice in America. You’ll find pain in their voices but also courage and hope.
We hope this will serve as a reality check and a starting point for meaningful conversations and change within the golf industry.
Related words: Eamon Lynch | Harold Varner III | Tiger Woods
JuliaKate E. Culpepper and Julie Williams contributed reporting
Mariah Stackhouse, LPGA player
What’s at the forefront of my mind? The raw answer to that question is just frustration, a heavy heart and just a constant questioning of how many times does this have to happen before something actually changes? That’s the raw feeling.
But then when I sit in that for a little while and I take a step back and kind of pay attention to the national conversation that’s at play, it’s combined with a bit of, I would say encouragement, because the response is so much more widely felt this time around than I’ve ever seen, and I feel like voices are being heard, and that’s good.
I don’t experience (racism) daily, but I experience it enough. A small example of that could be when I was at a tournament once and I was going into the clubhouse to get to the player locker room and the security guy asked for my ID, and I show it, and he looks closely to see the word “Player” and then verbally exclaims “Player!” And he takes a look at me and says, “Huh,” like that’s a shocking fact.
Those experiences that I’ve had are very real, which continue to show there is more room for growth and diversity. That would just be a concrete example that yes, I do experience racism on a day-to-day, sometimes in the golf world, sometimes in the grocery store. It’s not always direct or violent. It can be subtle.
The affirmation that my parents wrote for me as a kid is huge. Now, as a grown woman, it’s mindboggling to contemplate the amount of foresight they had when they wanted me to memorize it. When I read it now, it was worded in a way that would prepare me for life experiences I would definitely have as a young black woman in America and on the golf course. While the shock of that encounter with the security guard is like woah, it didn’t sour my mood to the point where I can’t go forth and have a good round, have a good day etc., and I’ll never allow it to, because I have that affirmation to remind me of who I am, my value in this world.
An action that I think everybody could rather easily participate in is acknowledging and participating in the conversation that’s going on right now and thinking about the fact that, while the conversation is dealing directly with George Floyd, the deeper part of that is where does it come from; and why have black people had so many of these experiences; and what can I do on a small level to combat racism.
When you recognize how loud this conversation is in America right now, it’s not loud to the black community because we’ve always had this conversation with each other, and we’ve always spoken up. It’s loud because other people are speaking up with us, and that’s incredibly important.
Alexis Belton, Symetra Tour player and World Long Drive competitor
I’ve grown up in a small town in Louisiana and my parents (John and Alana Belton) were some of the first black attorneys in my area. Even as a little girl I saw what they went through in order for people to see their value, not only as African-Americans, but in their field. I can remember in school getting ready for kindergarten and my dad’s car being bashed in just because of the color of our skin.
During this time of quarantine, we’ve had plenty of time to clean out our homes and things of that sort, and I was over at my parents’ house and we were looking at pictures that I had drawn as a kid. I went to an all-white school for a little while and moved to a more diverse school over time. One of the paintings that I painted was myself and I was white, and I wanted to be the president of the United States. I had a little description on the side, and it said I want to be the president so I can be rich and help people. I just kind of broke down in tears because I was like, I can’t believe that I hated myself so much that I colored myself in a way that showed the value whites had and how my blackness had none.
I played basketball all my life and when I moved into golf, I realized that I wasn’t valued as much. But I had a little bit more confidence in myself as an African-American. I also realized that I have to function differently on a golf course. I can’t be loud or I’m going to be stereotyped as an angry black woman. I can’t talk about how I really feel, whether it be about politics or why I thought “Black Panther” was amazing beyond just a good movie. I had to be really careful how I talk to people. I had to make sure that members felt comfortable even though I was a member.
I’m having a lot of conversations with my white friends, and I challenge them to put themselves in my shoes, which is really difficult to do. So if there’s someone that goes to church, I say why don’t you go to an African-American church and tell me your experience of you driving there and what you feel while you’re there within the building and how you feel after going? I had a friend call me who did that and they just bawled because of what they felt going to a black church.
My biggest hope is that it’s just not another two-week movement. I think that’s what I really, really struggle with. I think that’s where a lot of the anger comes, too. I think, are you just going to say something now, or are you going to do something?
I have to put myself in the right headspace to say OK, be grateful for the people that are speaking now, know they didn’t speak years ago and they might not even give an apology … but now they are speaking and now I can be grateful for that and help them keep their promise of wanting to do something. I think that’s what it comes down to, having real hard conversations and people allowing accountability.
My white friends text, and all the texts are kind of similar: “I didn’t know the right thing to say.”
I tell them you don’t have to have the right words, you just need to pull up a chair to the table. There’s grace at the table. Just pulling up the chair means everything.
Mike Whan, LPGA commissioner
I think if you want to stay uneducated, you can in any topic. I just had this conversation with a neighbor on a driving range actually where somebody said something about black lives matter and he yelled back, all lives matter. I said no offense, as a 52-year-old white man, when you respond all lives matter, you’re not listening, you’re talking. We got into this conversation on the driving range. Nobody is questioning whether your life has worth by saying black lives matter. It’s just you can’t comprehend what it must feel like to grow up in a society where you’re worried about whether or not your life has worth, especially in front of the people that we look to to keep us safe.
I said to him, you have black friends. Every one of your black friends can relate with a story where they were nervous in a police situation. I have zero, zero experiences like that. I’ve never worried about getting pulled over by a police officer and hearing my parents talk about ‘the talk.’ Every black friend I have can tell me about the talk, when their parents talked about 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock (on the steering wheel). Don’t make eye contact. Always keep your hands in vision. When somebody tells you that story, you realize that’s a life you completely don’t grasp. You can decide to not pay attention, but that’s just deciding to stay uneducated.
When I was a 25- or 26-year-old brand manager at Procter & Gamble in the late 80s, you went to diversity training at least once a month. … I went to these diversity training classes and they were always taught by people with diverse backgrounds. They always talked about how they don’t understand this. I remember thinking by the third training, I’m they. Every time they use the term they don’t understand, they’re talking about midwestern-born white males of privilege. I’m not exactly sure why, but after that training I went to the diversity group at P&G and said how do I become a licensed diversity trainer, because you’re going to have to put some people that look like me up at the front of the room as well because you’re giving really good examples that I don’t relate to. I need to tell some of my white male brethren, this is where my blind spot is. Getting trained to be a diversity trainer was one of the more enlightening things of my life. It changed my life probably forever.
One of the things we had to go to in this training process was an all-black church in Cincinnati. Just one Sunday. I remember thinking, how hard is that? I go to church anyway. I’ll knock that off my checklist. It’s a pretty interesting experience to first walk into a building where you are the only white guy. I remember walking into that church (service), which by the way lasted about four hours. The beginning was like a bake sale, everybody brought food and sat around and talked. When church was over, nobody left so I didn’t feel comfortable leaving. I just remember there was this really large woman named Berta who took me under her wing and had me sit next to her in the pew and introduced me to people. But it was really community, and church for me was not community. I was raised Catholic so church for me was sin relief. It was guilt relief. You felt guilty if you didn’t go, so you went. I didn’t do it to get in touch with other people or learning about other people’s woes. When the priest said one thing you said something back, you never thought about what you said back. It just showed me a different side.
James Blackwell, Ball State men’s golf grad assistant
There’s obviously sadness because of the tragedy that happened and the tragedy that seems to continue to be going on, going back decades on decades on decades ago. Frustration on a couple of different platforms. One frustration with – I’d say the best I can put it is – a lack of understanding from people as to what is going on. Even some people I consider to be friends. I’ll get on Twitter and I’ll see the things they are either tweeting or retweeting or liking and I’m like, ‘Wow, you guys really don’t understand what this is all about.’
Another platform of frustration – this has been going on in police departments for a long time and seemingly nothing has happened. People say, well, you have bad apples in every grouping of individuals. But I’ve seen some pretty great quotes on social media regarding that and it’s like, can you have a bad apple if it’s a pilot for an airplane? You don’t want to have a bad apple there.
My mother was a CEO of a hospital in the city of Buffalo, New York, and my father was a politician. I’ve just grown up around all different types of individuals, and I’ve had the utmost respect for police officers since a very young age. I’ve played golf with police officers. I’m good friends with a lot of police officers, and they deserve a lot of credit for the things that they go through on a day-to-day basis. But I have had numerous situations in my life where I’m like, man, I’m in a bad spot now.
I was just walking home to my parents’ house one night. I was probably 12 years old and I had an undercover cop pull me over and question me about why I was in the neighborhood and where I was going.
I was at my parents’ house – they live out in the suburbs now – I had just gotten back from college during Christmas break. We have a detached garage, and I was in the driveway maybe grabbing my backpack or something. It was 8:30 p.m., and a cop came bolting around the corner, pulled into the drive and put the high beams on. I’m like man, this is not it. The first comment he said was, “You’re not about to take off on me, are you?” That’s a great start. He proceeded with, “What are you doing here?” Even after I answered all of his questions about the house, he still wasn’t satisfied that I belonged on the property and asked to see my license. “So you mean to tell me that your parents live in this house?” I’m like, that is exactly what I’m saying.
It’s pitch black, I don’t think anybody was at the house at the time, anything could’ve happened then and there. I made sure my hands were visible, and what else can you do? It didn’t escalate. He was like, “Sorry, you’re good to go,” which in and of itself is another can of worms. Why did I look suspicious? But for a lot of other individuals, that situation escalates to something else.
All of a sudden I’m getting detained or a baton to the head or I’m getting tased or even worse, I’m getting shot and killed or choked out. Situations like that, that’s a bad apple. And what are we doing with the bad apples?
Jeff Dunovant, Director of Golf Operations at John A. White Golf Club and First Tee Metro Atlanta
One of the youngsters that I coached and taught and mentored for a long time (through the First Tee) had gone to Grambling State University on a golf scholarship and he applied for this job to work at a golf shop at this golf course (in Louisiana). So he called me and said, “Coach Jeff, I had a great interview. I think I’m going to get the job. It went really well. I think I’m really going to get the job.”
And some time went by and he never received the job and he never got a callback. . . . And what the golf professional said to me is that “he was a great candidate, I wanted to hire him but my membership would’ve fired me if I put a black person in my golf shop.” And so I was kind of shocked that he would say that. Then I had to tell him I was like, “Hey man, if you were a good golf professional, if you’re truly doing the job you’re supposed to be doing, I doubt your membership would’ve fired you over one hire even if he was a black.”
It’s a combination of systemic racism still going on for sure and then it’s like he said, it’s that fear that there is systemic racism and that he would lose his job. He kind of assumed, or maybe he really knew, but I think the assumption is that not everybody is ready for that, you know what I mean? Their membership is not quite ready for that.
One of my closest friends is a white guy, he’s a head professional and we worked together at Charlie Yates (at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta) and he would always tell me. “Jeff I’m trying to take a head professional job at a country club. That’s what I’m interviewing for. I’m interviewing for country club jobs, high-end country club jobs for my next move as I leave East Lake for a first assistant.”
And I told him, I don’t have that opportunity. I can’t pick and choose to turn down jobs. If I’m looking for a job I’ve got to take a public golf course job that is open. I can’t say I’m going to be a head professional at a country club because that’s not going to happen. That’s not going to happen for me. I don’t have that option. I’ve got to be the head pro at City Park in New Orleans or Lake Pontchartrain, a city course, because those are the only opportunities that open up in the industry.
Calista Reyes, Stanford sophomore
(Editor’s Note: Calista Reyes wrote the following statement on behalf of the Stanford women’s golf team that was posted on Twitter June 1.)
As a non-black member of the community, I was struck by the idea that the system is still allowing us to have racial injustice, racial prejudice and also racial violence to occur in this country. And as a member of the Asian-American community, what struck me with social media is this idea that other members within the community, specifically non-black members, still have the power to change conversations with their own family members and with members of their own community – to re-educate them about racism and to change their way of thinking. We can’t change the system until we can change the thoughts and perceptions within our own community.
After the release of our (team) statement we did start communicating a lot over group chat. A few teammates and I have been planning a way for us to facilitate the conversation within our team. We are planning to have a group conversation next week, and I’ve also been curating a list of books that we can start reading together as a team to further our conversation regarding the issue.
I want other people to learn from what I believe is valuable content, and I think especially during this time there have been great media sources that put an emphasis on the idea that we shouldn’t stay silent, but you should also take action. The main things that I’ve been trying to voice out using my social media platforms have been the sources in which you can further your education about anti-racism, sources that provide a list of books to read, a list of podcasts to listen to. Things you can watch on Netflix or websites you can go onto to further your knowledge about the situation at hand.
In addition, I think it’s important, through social media, to share organizations you can donate to, petitions that you should sign. I felt that, especially during this time, it is important that if you firmly believe that you need to advocate change, you’ll share it with others in your community.
Andy Walker, head men’s golf coach at Lynn University
I would be telling you the biggest lie on Earth if I said I’d never been discriminated against because I’m black on a golf course. I would say it’s far-fetched that any person of color that’s played this game hasn’t felt discrimination in one form or another. From the time I was young playing junior golf up until now.
The point is, there have been numerous incidences that have happened, so how do we treat that? We either let that defeat us and discourage us from playing or use it as motivation. Do I think the game of golf is racist? No, it’s a game. It doesn’t know race. It’s something that we go out and play. Does the structure behind golf have a racist past? Yes, of course it does. In 1961, which is still in our generation, that’s when the PGA Tour’s Caucasians-only clause was lifted. So it’s not like it was such a distant past where those things were happening. So short story long, yeah, I have felt discriminated against in the past.
… So how do we fix it? Is there a question or is there something that the governing bodies in golf need to do? I don’t know other than just being supportive of the people that are feeling this way and acknowledging that there is a problem. All of these people are hurting and protesting for a reason. There’s real pain behind all of these protests and conversations right now. So there are people that understand that it’s not just people that look like them that are being affected by this. I think that the main thing is just the acknowledgment of, hey, we know that there’s been a shady past, we know that all these things have happened, how do we move on from here? And I think that’s where a dialogue is starting to get to. Everyone needs to get comfortable being uncomfortable for a while and have some uncomfortable talks and accept some very uncomfortable truths.
Lakareber Abe, Symetra Tour player
Not being able to really do much or travel anywhere (with the pandemic), my family and I were doing a lot of walking around the neighborhood. We would walk every morning. My dad (Daudi) would take pictures of wildlife – like birds, we have rabbits, just anything.
One morning my sister called me, and she was frantic. She’s in Michigan right now. She’s like, you need to find dad. I was like, OK what’s going on? I hadn’t walked with him that morning. She said some guy came out and was yelling at dad, telling him he was casing the neighborhood and called the cops on him. Here we are, living in a gated community. The gate is up. You can’t really get in before 9 or 10 a.m. I think it was 7:30.
No one in the neighborhood isn’t from the neighborhood. I find my dad, and he had kept walking. My mom went out to find him and lo and behold, here come the cops to check out the situation.
My parents are from Uganda. They were children of war. They came to the states basically as refugees at the end of the civil rights moment in the 1970s. They see all that and then to think it’s still happening. They’re still going through it. There are so many stories. Even to this day, with everything bubbling over, they are telling us more stories of different things that have happened to them. It’s been tough.
I think for a while when you’re younger, especially in the spaces that I’ve grown in, there are things your parents can shield you from. Right now, we’re dealing with police brutality, but I remember Trayvon Martin, I remember Sandra Bland and I remember Tamir Rice, who I think was younger than me when he was playing in a playground by himself.
It’s hard because this is like the past 10 years of my life. Every time it’s the same cycle of emotions. It’s watching parent lose their sons, their daughters and having to live it out on national TV, just trying to get someone to understand, and it’s like nobody understands. Sometimes you walk those things by yourself as well. You don’t always have someone around to relate to what’s going on, or ever stop to understand it. Everyone is upset, but do they realize it’s been happening for so long? We’ve been almost begging for help.
Joe Hooks, mini-tour player
I’ve been thinking about what talk I will have with friends who haven’t spoken out or haven’t said anything on their social media that they use all the time, and they’re vocal about all types of things. Yet they choose to be quiet about what’s going on now. I am talking about my white friends that play professionally as well, really good players. I guess the issue is I know that they’re my friends, and I know the amount of respect that they have for me, but do they have respect for the overall struggle, for the overall issues of people like me. That’s two totally separate things.
If you think something is wrong, and you vocalize that you believe it’s wrong, you can be the catalyst to give other people courage to do the same. That’s the cycle that we need to really get going. We need white males especially to continue to voice that this is wrong and this is right. I’m sorry but this isn’t a matter of picking sides. It’s a matter of human rights.
I used to caddie at the Concession Golf Club. That was an opportunity to have somewhere to play and give me the funds necessary to live in Florida while I get in the groove of professional golf and not being at home. The experiences I had there were more good than bad. I guess one thing that always bothered me was members and guests would feel so comfortable asking me large generalized questions about myself as a black man. Do I play basketball? What sports do you play? They always start with basketball. Plenty of guys never really thought to consider the possibility that I might be a golfer. Maybe I grew up playing golf. Or that maybe I grew up at a private country club like I did. I grew up at Detroit Golf Club, where the Rocket Mortgage (Classic) is now held. My dad came from extreme poverty. He worked his way up through the supermarket industry and he was able to provide that for our family. Mentioning that was always this mind-boggling thing (to members). It almost made me all right with them – like OK, I like him. That’s like the most basic thing that is a matter of, in my opinion, white privilege. A lot of people, especially white males, they lack the ability to put themselves in somebody else’s shoes before speaking.
I grew up dealing with that at Detroit Golf Club, too. I’m like one of the few that was born in the club, yet I still had guests and occasional members talking to me as if I worked there, assuming that I worked there.
I do have faith. I do believe in a higher power, and I feel like some of this unfortunate destruction at the end of the day, might very well be necessary to get people to say, oh damn, we’ve got to figure out a way to not let this happen again. It’s just so painful to see all these people going through different issues that are mostly a direct result of the core issue – which has always been racial injustice in the country.
Lauren Stephenson, LPGA player
I’m sure for anyone who saw the video or read anything about (George Floyd’s death), it’s so mind-blowing that another human could do that to someone. For me personally, I feel like it has been eye-opening just from the fact that I’ve been able to have a lot of conversations with my friends and family, and I’ve honestly been trying to learn as much as I can by watching videos and doing research.
… I didn’t grow up in a racist family, but I’m very aware that friends and maybe even some of my distant family, I’m not too sure, do have some racist values or tendencies. We talked about how it’s important to step in and be able to talk to our friends and family. Even if you’re not willing to voice your opinion out to the world on your social media, or if you don’t have that platform, it’s just as important to step in a family member situation or friend and be that voice for other people.
We’ve all seen the backlash that like Justin Thomas and Brooks Koepka and all of them got (for their social media posts) and it’s honestly sad being in the golf community, how terrible the response is when people are standing up for something that’s important and what’s right. For me, it’s obviously on a smaller scale. I don’t have all the followers and stuff like that, but I did get some rude comments or responses and lost some followers. I think that’s just a choice you have to make as an athlete and as someone who has a voice and a platform.
You have to decide whether you’re going to stand up for what’s right and be willing to take the criticism and hateful comments, or just not say anything at all. … I think people have just gotten to the point where enough’s enough, and they want to see a change. I’m sure 30 years from now our kids and our grandkids will read about this in history books, and hopefully, it will be what really makes a difference.
Renee Powell, former LPGA player
As I look and see all those people throughout the country and in other parts of the world that are standing up for what’s going on now, there sometimes seems to be more white people out there than there are black people.
. . . The one (personal) incident that did happen that I can tell you about was when we were actually in Idaho (in the late 1960s or early 1970s). . . . (The LPGA players stayed in hotels) and in one instance I went in to register and they said, “Well, we don’t have a registration for you,” and I knew I’d made a registration just like everyone else had but when they saw my face it was a little different. So a player that was standing there at the same time went out and actually told Kathy Whitworth about the trouble I was having. And Kathy Whitworth was the one that came in and said, “Either we all stay or we all walk.”
. . . I remember my roommate on the tour for a long time was a Canadian golfer, Sandra Post, and sometimes we’d be in restaurants and they would serve everyone else around us except for us so we would just get up and leave. And it wasn’t because Sandra was Canadian, it was because I was there too. And there were incidents when I went into the locker room and there’s always security in the locker room and everyone shows their ID badge to walk in, and I would get stopped at different times.
. . . Marlene Hagge and I were talking today and she relayed this incident to me about Althea Gibson. Althea was the best-known player on the LPGA tour because she was a world-class champion in another sport, she had won Wimbledon, the French Open and the U.S. Open. . . . Althea went to register and Marlene came in and the guy behind the counter said, “Well, I’m sorry but what’s your name? We don’t have a reservation for you. So I’m sorry you can’t stay.”
And Marlene said she knew exactly what was going on and so she said, “Althea, just wait here for a second,’ and she told the guy behind the desk, “Oh actually I need two keys.” And so right in front of him she said, “Here I’ll see you in the room, Althea,” and gave her the other key. And she said they roomed together for, I don’t know, a year and a half, two years after that.
Amy Olson, LPGA player
I personally have been seeking to listen and understand in the last week. Trying to understand what our black brothers and sisters go through on a daily basis. Just to allow my eyes to be opened. I think we all have a lot to learn.
George Floyd’s murder hit really close to home for me. Minneapolis is where my husband is from. It was really heartbreaking to read about how he was treated and how he died. It’s also extremely heartbreaking to see the aftermath of it. We should be angry. I think it’s really important to be angry about things that are wrong. But to hate and to riot and have violence and to steal and to destruct property, that’s also wrong.
I think for me personally, my prayer has been for justice and love. They are not opposites. Jesus came to us and demonstrated them perfectly. Justice, by declaring us guilty of every one of our wrongful actions, but he loves us so much that he took our punishment on himself. That’s the kind of love our world needs. I have confidence that justice will be served. The fact that our world was outraged over this universally, tells me that at least as a society we know what’s right, even if we don’t always do what’s right.
Morgan Hoffmann, PGA Tour player
It took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts and put something down because I don’t think anybody has the right answer on what to say. There is no right thing to say. You just need to speak from your heart and your own experiences. Everyone in this country has their own experiences about what’s going on.
What I kind of wanted to get across is people need to do their research on the true history in America and what’s really going on. Look into the laws that are actually written down that suppress African-Americans, from how much they get paid to how they can get hired, how the white man has basically taken over everything for its riches. It’s just frustrating because everybody wants it to be America, the land of the free, but is that really what’s going on? I’m so happy that these protests are actually happening now, and people are starting to speak up.
My dad is extremely racist, and I’ve been out of my home since I was 16 on purpose, and I’ve learned what I have on my own. If there’s backlash coming back from that post, then it’s people who don’t understand really what’s going on and were not educated properly on racism in this country, because it hasn’t stopped and it’s frustrating.
I watched a video of somebody making a speech, and they asked a group of people, “Would anybody in this room please stand if you would like to be treated like an African-American is in this country right now?” and nobody stood. And she repeated the question again and nobody stood again. She’s like, “Exactly, you understand exactly what’s going on in this country but you’re not willing to do anything about it because you’re comfortable where you are.”
I think we’ve all fallen into that. It’s a really hard subject to talk about, but it needs to be talked about and pushed in this country. For women’s rights, black rights, minority rights. Anybody with a platform. A lot of basketball players and football players are doing a great job, but obviously the PGA Tour is mainly white Americans. If we were to speak up more, then that would be huge I think.
Oneda Castillo, global education instructor for the LPGA
We had our first U.S. Open here in the United States in 1895 and then in the second U.S. Open, which happened in 1896, there was an African-American man named John Shippen and there was a Native American man, his name is Oscar Bunn.
These two men signed up to play in the tournament, but what happened was the white guys who played in these tournaments before had played overseas before they came to the United States. They refused to play. They went to the tournament host and said, “Hey, if this black guy and this Native American guy play, we’re not going to play.”
So the head of the USGA, and this was 1896, his name was Theodore Havemeyer, his name is still on the USGA, U.S. Open tournament trophy. He said to all these white guys, “John Shippen and Oscar Bunn are going to play even if all you don’t.”
And so if we go back all the way to 1896, the beginning of golf really in this country, a white man stood up for a black man and a Native American man and he set a precedent in my mind for what it should be. However, because of the systemic racism that happens in our country, the golf world decided in 1934 to insert a Caucasian-only clause into the charter and not allow African-Americans to become members. And that remained in their charter until 1961. So you see, golf actually got started on a pretty nice footing and then took a nice little step backwards as more people decided they didn’t want to have African-Americans to be involved in the sport.
. . . As much as golf is a separate business and a separate piece of our American story, it still filters right back to the American story. And the story is this: If intentionally in 1619, people were brought to this country to be slaves, that was before we even had a government, don’t you think that it would take intentional effort to reverse it? Intentional. It’s not going to happen by accident… I look at the USTA, the United States Tennis Association. You notice when you watch the U.S. Open Tennis Championship, now you will see more people of color from the United States but they actually put forth a plan. . . . That involved African-American sororities, fraternities, communities, Boys and Girls Clubs, all kinds of things that they did. A pointed plan to increase the numbers of African-Americans who played the game.
That’s why I say if there was a plan and you brought Africans over to America and you made them slaves, you need to have a plan to fix that. And so I took my hat off to the USTA, what they did, because you can actually see it.
