Larry Bird teaches us all a valuable life lesson: "They Told Us Not to Say This" by Jenn Alandy Trahan

We like to thinks of sports as a great equalizer, a realm in which the limits of race and class that exist in the rest of society don't hold anyone back. Of course, this isn't true, although it's not a terribly popular thing to point out. 93% of NHL players (that's hockey, non-sports people) are white. In spite of some really exciting breakthroughs by black swimmers in the last Olympics, most top-level swimmers are white. When's the last time someone won a major marathon who wasn't from Ethiopia, Eritrea, or Kenya? And, as everyone knows, the NBA (pro basketball), even though it is pulling players from all over the world in an attempt to get the very best, is still three-fourths black players. (True story: I walked into a bar in West Virginia in 2011, and someone turned on a basketball game. One bar patron, I think sensing I was from out of town and saying it to test out my reaction, yelled, "Turn off that shit...why do I want to see a bunch of n****rs running around?" So it's understood, although not always talked about outside of West Virginia, that basketball is played mostly by black athletes.)

So when Jenn Alandy Trahan starts off her short story "They Told Us Not to Say This" with the line "The few white boys in our town could ball," we all know what she's referring to, even though it's something, like her title alludes to, that we're not supposed to talk about.

Well known, but seldom discussed in polite society.

The first-person-plural narrator (Karen, another category in our BASS drinking game?) is the group voice of young Filipino women in high school in a California community. "We" have a lot to complain about. "Our" brothers get treated indulgently, while the girls are either ignored or treated like they are a liability, a liability best managed by keeping them far from any boys until "we" are grown. The only exception is if one of "us" manages to find a rich white boy to date. "Our" parents idolize whiteness and wealth ("anyone with a four-bedroom in Glen Cove was automatically a good person"), and this has led "us" to dislike our own brownness.

There are two things that shake up the self-loathing of the girls in this community. One is Brent Zalesky. He's one of those "few white boys" in their town who's good at basketball. He's not like the white people most of the girls' parents work for. He's like the people in their community in that he has to work for what he gets, and he's not afraid to do it. He's from the poorer quarters himself, and "doesn't flinch from the sound of gunshots." Unlike the rich white boys, for whom using street language and wearing the same clothes as kids from the poorer quarters was just a high school phase, one they'd grow out of when they decided to grow up, Brent really talks like that and dresses like that.

Brent is the one who inspires the girls to find the other outlet in life besides himself that helps them deal with their lack of voice. He inspires them to play basketball. On the court, they are not quiet and well-mannered. They throw elbows. They dive after loose balls. They stand up on the court to the daughters of the same white people who order the girls' parents around. It's empowering. It will serve the girls later in life to find a voice when other white women try to ignore them or talk over them because they are brown, "the color of their nannies."

It was actually Brent who inspired the girls to play basketball, and this is the part of the story I find fascinating. Brent is very clearly an example of the white savior trope. Brent is the one who makes them feel good about being Filipino. He's the one who lets them know about Filipino dance-pop singer Jocelyn Enriquez (although I don't really believe her music is the kind of thing a tough kid like Brent would have been listening to). He thinks Filipino chicks are cool (and is a perfect, bad-boy gentleman while on dates with one of them), and that's enough for the Filipino girls in the school to start loving themselves. Even when they start playing basketball, "We played for him." Brent is the entire impetus for the girls to find self-realization.

Speaking of white saviors, Larry Bird used to sometimes be called the "great white hope," because he was one of the few white superstars in basketball. I used to really like him when I played basketball, and I wore his shoes, but that also made me feel strange. Was I looking up to him because I liked his play, or because he was white and I was white? At fourteen, sports made me more aware of the existence of racial issues in America rather than make those issues go away. 

I don't find any evidence that the story is observing Brent's white savior-ness ironically, just as I don't find any evidence that the story is tempering in any way its view that sports are empowering.

What's wrong with the white savior?

I don't necessarily think every white savior story is a bad story.  Some of the examples cited as abuses of the genre in film, like The Help, Green Book, hell, even Lincoln, seem absurd to me, because they're based on real-life examples, not just the white savior fantasies someone came up with in their white imagination. And I think sometimes, writers of color create stories with white saviors in them (think Tyler Perry) and it's not treated like an offense because it's coming from a writer of color. (Perry does get an inordinate amount of criticism from black culture writers, but not always for having white saviors. It's a complicated relationship between him and black intellectuals.)

Whether this story is good or awful has a lot to do with the identity of the author. If I wrote it, I'd be flayed.  And I'd deserve the criticism, because this would be a story coming straight from my white imagination about how the way for minority females to feel good about themselves is just to find themselves a good white man who loves your sexy brown skin just the way it is, mama.

But is the knee-jerk resistance to the white savior always really justified? If there is no role for white people to play in the restoration of minorities to full sociological and psychological health, then why should white people read stories about minorities?

The fact is that the "we" of this story have, whether they've meant to or not, ingested some of their parents' need for validation from white people. So Brent's validation matters to them, and is part of a process for them in what will later become them validating themselves. They may have started playing for him, but they kept playing because it did something for them they liked, something they found empowering.

The title "They Told Us Not to Say This" refers, on the one hand, to how these Filipino girls were taught to keep quiet. But it could also refer to how this story is telling a truth about white savior stories that's not a very popular truth. White saviors can sometimes exist. In fact, sometimes only a white person can perform the role that's needed, because the problem has everything to do with white people. The girls' feelings of inferiority are locked into their skin color compared to white skin color. Much like I can tell my wife how pretty or smart she is a million times, but it somehow means something more when she hears it from someone else, Brent's validation means more, even though it shouldn't. A white savior is the only kind of savior that can meet the need, just as a writer of color is the only person who can say this uncomfortable truth.

That doesn't mean we have to indulge in the worst parts of the white savior trope. Brent doesn't need to run a victory lap looking for cheers because he was just a decent human being the way everyone should be. And ultimately, even though he's important to the story, the story's not about him, but about what happens to the girls partly because of him. Nonetheless, there is a role for white people to play in making society what we wish sports were. Even though we're not supposed to talk about it.