Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

Culture encompasses a lot of things: music, food, history, art, dance, and language. Language encompasses a lot of things: words, gestures, expressions, interpretations. Black culture and history were made accessible to me through the television screen and through the pages of Texas-printed history books, some of which implicated that “state’s rights” was the primary cause of the American Civil War….rather than the protection of the enslavement of human beings.

I was lucky in that I got a crash course on how to engage in black culture as a white person when I was 14, and I showed up to Lubbock High’s first summer league basketball game. Thanks to a decade of body-reading skills, I quickly sized up my teammates, all of whom were Black or Hispanic. I immediately realized I was right in the middle of the curve, athletically. Everybody else seemed to know each other, and our team looked at me like I was something out of the ordinary. Once the game started, nothing else mattered. We were just kids trying to figure each other out. I still remember driving right and cutting to the basket with the ball. I snuck a pass around the defender and we got an easy lay up. The boys from Estacado called a timeout, and we went to get some water.

And then I stood at the entryway to a Culture that was not my own.

Our teammates stuck out their hands to congratulate us and I STRAIGHT UP SHOOK A DUDE’S HAND LIKE HE WAS THE GOVERNOR OF TEXAS.

You know how when you shake someone’s hand and they go “limp fish” on you? Or when you try and go over-under and you thought he was gonna be the under and then y’all are arm wrestling? Those are the perils of shaking someone’s hand like you just closed on a big account.

That’s not how one normally slaps five in a glorified pickup game between freshman in high school. It’s a little too formal, ya know?

And thus begin my education in communication. Head nods, fist bumps, chest bumps, lock ups, snaps, daps, half-hugs, shoulder shrugs, G-unit dance moves.

Learning to communicate with my teammates opened my eyes to cultural interactions I’d been missing out on. Families have their own language and culture, and my family at Lubbock High took me in despite my awkwardness, subpar athleticism, and floppy hair. The history of black culture in America is one of counter-culture and creating a concrete space for expression amidst a more vanilla majority. My bumping into the doorway included actual bumping of fists, sliding of palms, and low-fives slapped after an assist. The doorway to a different cultural expression.

I love black culture and history. I appreciate black culture and history. I love and appreciate it because it reminds me that there’s not one right way to live. We’re all a part of a beautiful tapestry of faith and light and love. I love my West Texas culture, too. I love Air Jordans, Hyperdunks, and Beck boots. I appreciate Mitchell & Ness and Stetson.

Learning to communicate with my family/team didn’t make me cool, it didn’t make me a better ball player, it didn’t make me Black or Hispanic.

It made me more human.

It wasn’t the culture I grew up with. It wasn’t mine. But I grew up alongside it, unaware, and that’s the tragedy. It’s wild to me that I had no idea there might be another way to do things. So when our cultures intersected, bumping into one another, my humanity was expanded and the world got opened up and became more and more beautiful. More than one way to live. More than one way to say hi. More than one way to say, good shot. Maybe one day we won’t view culture wars as competitive and corruptive. Maybe one day we’ll be like, “Yep. Rainbow’s gotta have all those colors. Otherwise, ain’t a rainbow.” Maybe one day…