Sitting in homeroom at 7:30 in the morning would sound like a normal morning for most highschoolers, but this wasn’t a normal day for me. I was a 16 year old from Idaho who moved to Brooklyn, New York.

There I was, sitting in homeroom watching unknown faces walk in. These weren’t just unknown faces though, to me every face seemed foreign. Every person that walked through the door was either latino or black. I began to fell out of place. Before I knew it, all of the desks were filled and the only other caucasian was the teacher who stared at the room with a blank smile. As homeroom began and the morning bell rang, the teacher began asking students what they did over the summer,

“What did you do this summer Dante?”

He replied saying, “I don’t know, I just played basketball and stuff.”

After she went around the room questioning each kid, she finally got to me,
“Introduce yourself and tell me one thing you did this summer?”

I replied saying, “My name is Jeffery Parker, this summer I moved here from Grangeville, Idaho.”

“Wow, nice to meet you Jeffery, Brooklyn is glad to have you.” she replied

After I had proclaimed my origins, I realized that all of the foreign kids were staring at me as if I was an Alien. Before I died of embarrassment, the period bell rang and our homeroom teacher told us to go to our first period class. As all of the kids shuffled out of the class while I slowly drifted behind them, I realized that Dante was staring at me. He continued to stare at me with an angry glance until we left the classroom. After we both entered the hallway full of squeaky shoes and loud conversations, Dante approached me,

“Good luck in Brooklyn, farmboy.”

After he said that I was confused. Why would someone who I never spoke to approach me so angrily. Unfortunately, I didn’t know that this would only be the beginning of my troubles with Dante.

In Idaho things were different, people were different. It seemed that back in Idaho everyone knew everyone. Brooklyn was different, all the kids kept to themselves and if they weren’t keeping to themselves they were insulting someone. There was only one thing that Idaho had in common with Brooklyn. Football. In Idaho every boy was expected to play football if they were even remotely big. In Brooklyn football was all anyone talked about, you’d always hear someone talking about the Jets on a losing streak or talking about the Giants losing another player due to injury. This is why when Football season started, I knew I had to join, even if I was going to be the only white kid on the team.

At the football teams first meeting, our coach split all the kids up according to their wanted position. After looking around, I realized that Dante and I both wanted to be runningbacks. Even though Dante and I had a rough start, I thought that this rivalry with Dante could turn into a friendship considering that we would running the ball together. But I was wrong, the first practice things only got worse,

“What do you think you’re doing farmboy?” Dante exclaimed

“I’m trying to run the ball, same as you.” I replied

“Well I’m the best runningback in the school and there is only room for one of us so I suggest you stay in your lane farmboy.”

So obviously Dante was a tough cookie but I wasn’t going to give up and I definitely wasn’t going to let him take my position on the field. For the next three weeks me and Dante battled it out on the field. Every time the coach blew the whistle me and Dante were racing into our next drill. Every time practice ended the players were expected to clean the field, me and Dante were always the first to get up and clean. All of our teamates always stared at me and Dante like we were crazy but our coach loved us. On the first day of the fourth week of practice a lineman named, Andy, approached me and said,

“Yo Jeff, I’ve been seeing you bust your butt everyday to catch up with Dante but it don’t matter”

“What do you mean Andy”

“Jeff, I don’t want to sound mean but I’m letting you know right now that you’re not gonna get any play time if you play for this team.”

I replied saying, “well if I keep trying I will.”

“Na Jeff, these coaches ain’t giving a white kid more time than a black kid, it don’t matter how hard you try Jeff.”

That’s when it hit me. Andy was right. I was the only white kid on the team and I wasn’t any better than Dante so why would the coach risk being called racist to let me play. I decided that I’d wait till the first game to see if Andy was right.

BRRRR! The starting whistle blew and our rival team punted the ball down the field to our receiver. This game was the test. This decided whether or not I stay on the team, this would show me if my coach would allow a white boy to play. As the game kept progressing into the third quarter, I waited patiently for coach to finally call Dante off the field. After 15 minutes third quarter had ended and our team was surpassing the rival team 28-14, even though this was an obvious victory for the team, I felt sick. I couldn’t believe it. Even though it made sense in my head and Andy told me, I refused to believe that the coaches would completely ignore all the effort I had put in the past weeks. That game I played exactly zero minutes of playtime and the coaches said gave me no reason as to why all my work at practice went to waste. After that game I decided to quit the football team.

Even though I didn’t get to play football, I realized something about humans that is much more important than any stupid sport. As humans we are very childish. We group people into different races and religions so we can formulate our own opinions and ideas about those people. We can allow ourselves to think of people in certain ways just because the color of their skin is different to ours. Just because I’m a white boy from Idaho doesn’t mean I’m any less or more than anyone from Brooklyn, we are all human and that’s what matters.