For all the readers, my name is Devon Henderson from Sacramento, California. I’m a graduating senior here at Arizona State University. Sports Journalism has been my calling for as long as I can remember, even if I didn’t know it. Growing up, while most my age were watching cartoons I was watching sports documentaries (My favorite library is ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary collection), debate talk shows, and anything else in the sporting world I could get my hands on. I’ve always been obsessed with the storytelling of sports because they are the greatest stories ever told. Unlike network television, no one knows the ending of these stories. That’s what makes it appealing to the masses. From that young age, I knew sports journalism and sports storytelling were a path I wanted to pursue.
I was lucky enough through my family and the community I grew up in to be afforded a worldview as expansive and convoluted as exists in this country. I’m the mixed biracial son of a Black but conservative police officer and a white Jewish but liberal assistant school principal. That alone is a juxtaposition in itself that lives within me. My father’s mother, in contrast to him, grew up in rural Montgomery, Alabama, coming of age in the absolute height and most contentious period of the Civil Rights Movement. For as long as I have been on this earth, I have been instilled with the stories of marches alongside the movement’s most revered figure and his dreams for a better future (yes, that one, you know who I’m talking about). She’s instilled stories of 4-mile walks to and from high school throughout the bus boycott. My grandmother is a proud and strong Black woman who lived through one of the worst periods for Black people in this country’s history, and I have been lucky enough to be exposed to that worldview and understanding of the country I live in.
On my Jewish side, my mother’s grandmother was one of only two of her family members to survive the Holocaust and escape to America. The rest didn’t survive the concentration camps. While I only met my great-grandmother, her pain and experiences were passed down through the generations to me, and those live inside me as well, shaping my worldview.
I grew up an avid competitive soccer player in California, creating lifelong bonds for years with the strong Mexican community in my state and my sport. I’ve been to as many quinces and family bailes as I’ve been to Sweet 16s. For good measure, my K-12 school district, the Natomas Unified School District, was rated as the second most diverse in the country in a recent Niche.com report. There wasn’t a cultural practice, holiday, food, or language, I wasn’t exposed to in my formative years.
But why do you care? What does any of this have to do with sports? Sports are a microcosm of life. While simultaneously for some, the most trivial and insignificant facet of society, they are also the most vital windows through which we examine society at large. Sports are as bonding and as devise as religion and politics.
I always say “A Muslim from India and a Christian from the heart of Alabama may not see any commonalities in their world perspectives but if they both support the Crimson Tide they are bonded forever.”
That’s what I do. I have so many different experiences and ways of viewing life within me. I view sports as life, so I view sports through a kaleidoscope of lenses.
Many don’t see how their discourse within sports presents who they are as people. The question I consistently ask myself is “What does this mean for our lives? How is this related back to all of us?” Cause at the end of the day that is what sports is about. It’s about you and me.
It’s about that black kid living in poverty in South Florida who was a good quarterback in youth football but got told he couldn’t play that position because of preconceived notions and prejudices. Now he watches Lamar Jackson and is emperor dot pure his talents to improve his life for him and his family.
It’s about Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the anthem, forcing an entire country to have uncomfortable conversations about what it is they represent. They didn’t all agree. Many didn’t agree with the former Quarterback’s views, but they talked about it.
Sports is former NBA’s most improved player of the year Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refusal to stand for the National Anthem, 20 years before Kaepernick, to fight for more religious freedom.
Sports has always been everything for me. I think it is everything there is. I’ve experienced, either myself or through stories from my family, some of the best and worst in American and Human history. There is an innate expanse for criticism and sympathy I use when viewing the fundamental concerns of life through sports and I will share that to the best of my ability with you all.
