This is a true story – except for the part about why I left Oklahoma for New Mexico. But this incident happened in the early ’90s after my dad died and I went back to my hometown to help out the family. My car was in the shop so I decided to walk over to my friend’s house (about a half-mile away) to shoot some hoops and blow off some steam. Growing up in my small town I had never really faced a lot of overt racism; didn’t really have to deal with the KKK, neo-Nazis or white supremacists. But on this particular day – I did. It caught me by surprise. Three white guys came walking up as I was knocking on my buddy’s door (who was also a white guy). Their apparent leader asked me, “What the hell are you doing walking through this neighborhood?” I simply replied “I grew up here. I remember when these houses weren’t even here. Who are you anyway?” I quickly recognized that these guys were not from my hometown. Surprisingly the apparent leader, and by the way they were all shirtless with tattoos (which was the least of my worries), and he ordered one of the other guys to “go get that rope out of the back of my truck.” Okay, so now I’m thinking I might be in a little bit of a jam here. I could run a 4.6 second forty-yard dash and was also a half-mile and mile track runner. But I was blocked in by my buddy’s porch fence. As the subservient went to the truck I started looking around for options. I noticed that my buddy had a glass door right behind me. My plan was to break the glass and use a glass shard as a weapon against these punks. I figured I could grab a piece of glass and put an end to this episode.Read More on the Story:
Harlan McKosato: Racists and Their Dominant Race Thoughts are Nothing New (Indian Country Media Network August 25, 2017)
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