Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge
I do not think it is wrong to make sure you have a staff of people that reflect the participants. For one if you have women officiating, they can and likely will relate more to the players in the Women's game than many men. Just like if you have African-Americans officiating the players might feel like they can say things to those individuals that they would not say to other races. Right or wrong that is certainly the case in my experiences and other officials I know that are Black.
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Rut and I come from the same place on this one. I've dealt with this since I was an intramural official in
college, for crying out loud. My boss would put me on certain games involving all-White and all-Black teams for two reasons: He felt I could handle it and I'm Black. And no, I didn't have to guess, he told me. The reason? Some of the Black teams complained they weren't getting callls from my White colleagues so he wanted that potential gripe dealt with.
Flash forward to my BV/GV life and I can tell you it makes a difference. I'm part of an organization in NYC that works rec leagues in mainly non-White areas all over the five boroughs. We see these kids from the time some of the are 6 or 7 all the way through HS. When they see us on the court in HS it's as though they're seeing a relative and there's lots of stuff they won't do or that we can stop them from doing that officials from other areas can't (I've used the line, "You know better than that" a bunch of times).
Funny story about not adapting from two years ago during a BV game. A White male from Brooklyn was sent up to East Harlem to work a game with me. He truly looked like a fish out of water in the environment, he had all kinds of trouble with the coaches (all of whom were White, BTW...he had to ring up both of one team's ACs but he waited way too long to do it) and ended up stopping a 10-point game with six seconds left because he "saw something in the eyes of the players that told him we were going to have trouble." The players - all Black - were the only ones we
didn't have an issue with during the game. I think it was a simple case of him not being comfortable in the environment and I doubt he's been out of his comfort area since. He's not the norm, believe me, but an assignor needs to know who's working for him/her.
In terms of access, well, that's why that NYC organization was created 50 years ago. Non-White officials weren't getting high-level games, regardless of the race(s) of the teams involved. It has changed over the years on the public school side but not so much on the private/Catholic school side. I know guys - no joke - who have been working NCAAM ball for years who are still Frosh/JV in the Catholic leagues.
All this to say that sometimes you have to force the action in terms of race, gender, whatever even in our vocation to find some of the better people. I know it helped me last month but I also know if I'd fallen on my face I would've been SOL. My assignor is a reasonable guy but he's not into charity cases.