Been a hot minute since I posted on this board, but I couldn't let this one go without comment. Probably giving away my identity but since I don't post, I don't really care.
I'm a black female who goes to all of the home football games and 90% of the away games (100% if BC & Cuse aren't on the schedule...been there, done that, not keen to go back). Without failure, I will be asked at least once during an away game, "which one is your son?" Twelve years ago, the question was, "are you dating someone on the team?" First of all, I just turned 41 but I've been getting this question since my early 30s which assumed I had to have been a teen mom..thanks for putting that stereotype on me. BTW, I don't have any kids at 41 either. Secondly, the player ticket allotments are in a different part of the visitor section. Lastly, those people typically have on a jersey, t-shirt, button, hat or something that identifies them as related to a player. I have on black and gold/beige/yellow, sometimes a WF logo, but never anything that suggests I'm partial to a certain player; yet, I get the question EVERY GAME. I am not exaggerating.
I have an undergraduate degree from MSD. I worked at MSD. I'm southern born and bred, but I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I'm smart enough to recognize the micro-aggression when it slaps me in the face every fall. People assume I'm at the games because I'm a breeder; and it's indisputable when the white guy sitting next to me is asked, "did ya go to Wake or are you from Winston?". Excuse me?!? It doesn't even cross their mind that I'm an alumna until I say, "no, I graduated in '01 and worked at the university." And the subsequent, "Ohhhh wow!" is even more insulting, like I'm an anomaly. Maybe voluntarily trekking to god awful Tallahassee in September is, but not being a black female with a degree from WF. There are a lot of us--doctors, lawyers, artists, CMOs, bankers :thumbsup: I had a partial merit scholarship and my parents paid the rest of my COA, so I earned my spot and my parents paid for me to attend this university. I've been a Deac fan since I was four years old and saw Muggsy playing.
Fortunately, these unconscious biases haven't deterred me from loving and supporting Wake as much as I do. I still go to the Charlotte events if I'm in town and the Deac Club tailgates at the away games. I won't let the arrogance of those who would dismiss the experiences of the underrepresented because it doesn't apply to them deter me (and make no mistake, it's nothing less than arrogance...always is in a environment where affluence controls and entitlement runs rampant, which is why racial, religious, socioeconomic and regional diversity is necessary in a culture like Wake's). I come from a long line of disrupters -- my parents were protesters in the 60s and my dad is still agitating people in his mid-70s. I piss people off weekly--myself included--with uncomfortable truths, and no one's died yet.
