Who know a bball game would inspire such a post?

Hey folks,

I know I only posted a couple days ago, but I'm at it again. What do I want to say? Well, I played basketball tonight. There is a large church near by and they have a small gym for drop in bball. We play 4 on 4. There's often many guys that come out. I'm quite out of practice and out of shape, but I think I'm improving on both counts. What I wanted to mention, though, is the multicultural dimension. I'm not used to playing with such a diverse crowd. I'd say on average the guys that come out are 25% caucasian, 25% latino and 50% african american. It's a new experience for me. I don't think I'm very good at it. Or rather, I don't know what good at it looks like. I'm not sure how "different" I should see everyone. At times you think you shouldn't look at someone and see their color, their race, their ethnicity; you just a person. But at the same time a person is made up of many features, and those are parts of them; denying that denies who they are. I'm just babbling as I usually do. I don't have any problem playing with any of them. Though I do feel like the african americans seem to be slighlty more of a "group" (which isn't surprising 'cause I think they've all gone to school together). But I've felt it. But I'd be lying if I didn't see people differently. We didn't have much ethnic diversity growing up in Devon (and then I remember that my dad isn't caucasian - this is a very new realization for me, actually). And that I am half "ethnic minority." But anyways, to illustrate, it went something like this. If any team we played against in high school had an african american on it, they were automatically good. It was like, "shit, they've got a black guy. We're gonna get smoked." It didn't even matter if that guy was any good, if he started or not. And we didn't believe that we would lose; we planned to beat everyone. It was more of a joke than anything. And obviously that wasn't an overtly degrading mindset. But it was still something. And I don't really know what it was. But it's my background. And I'm preparing to go into a field where cultural sensitivity is EXTREMELY important. I'd argue that it is as important in clinical psychology as any other field. I think it's good that I get the chace, because I'll get lots of opportunity to learn about it, to be directly trained in it, to experience it, etc. And it was a consideration in moving to southern California. At many stores (e.g. the Target a block from here) signs are in Spanish and English. I've gone to till's at small stores where the person speaks primarly Spanish only. There is a very large african american presence as well. And there is also a substantial asian community near by. There of course is varying levels of integratedness. I've never really had a close friend who wasn't caucasian. I hope that changes. Our psych doctoral cohort represnts to some degree diversity as well; we have caucasian (still the majority) with asian, latino/latina, african american, eastern european (in that order from most to least). It's just been a neat experience for me. We'll see how I grow.