One of the black professors sitting near of us popped up, shrugged and yelled, “Split the teams up, guys! I’m ready to play!” I just want to take care of my kids.”Ī grad student and I exchanged numbers with him, as I was in between jobs myself at the time and figured we could work together on finding employment. “Do y'all know of any spot that’s hiring? I’ll do anything.
One day he walked into gym with a heavy face and addressed a couple of us on the sideline.
Paul was sort of a blabbermouth - like most 20-something, non-pros with freakish talent. I never really had a problem with him, but some of the guys in the gym did. Dude was easily the best player in attendance every week. And it didn’t matter if you pushed him, kicked his leg or hung from his arm, his shots would fall. No, he didn’t have a deed to the property, but he could hit shots from anywhere on court as if it were his home. There was this medium-built curly headed West Baltimore dude named Paul who basically owned the gym. I used to play basketball twice a week at Johns Hopkins University in the student, faculty and employee game. He made it, white people love him, and that’s enough. For example, you can participate in thuggish actions and still be fake, like criminals who commit crimes and then constantly save themselves by snitching on other criminals.Īnd the reverse is true, too: There's the black guy who comes into the hood and brags about being the only black guy on his job, but never tries to help anyone else from the neighborhood get hired. Most people, though, tend to tie being "a real one" to those types of behaviors, in addition to doing hard drugs, fighting for no reason, never putting the toilet seat down and all other forms of hypermasculinity. and his friends called me "real," it was more about my accessibility and how we engaged than that scene of my guzzling a cup of Hennessy outside in an unfamiliar neighborhood (forget about calling women "bitches" or claiming to be gangsta, as these are things that I don’t do). Many may claim realness, and yet fail to meet its simple requirements.Įarlier this week, I wrote about running into an old friend, O.G., on the street in Brooklyn, and going back to his block to meet his friends. Being a "real one" and "keepin' it real" are terms that are always tossed around but often misunderstood.
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