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Where are you from? asked the cashier at a gas station off 1-85 somewhere south of Richmond. That was a question I had not heard in years. l instantly knew that a week spent away from Northern Virginia on a construction site in Durham talking to folks who hail from Western North Carolina had corrected my manner of speaking back to that of my youth. In a sense, for the week, l was home and the comfort of the place and the people had peeled away the pretense of the adapted way of speaking that has become second nature to me after more than 30 years away from the Old North State. Surprisingly, my natural way of speaking was not the only thing from my past that I was reminded of this past week.

On my hotel TV, The Tournament was playing on the ACC network. The Tournament is a 10-part documentary that tells the story of the ACC Basketball Tournament and much of the history of the ACC. I got to see the first three or four episodes and enjoyed remembering the happiness that ACC basketball brought to me growing up in North Carolina. Back then, the conference was eight or nine teams and on late February afternoons, it was not uncommon for TVs to get rolled into classrooms to watch early round tournament games instead of continuing with whatever lessons were on the lesson plan for that day.

By the time I was a serious ACC fan in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, I rooted for whatever team was on TV on a given night and players named Nance, Worthy, Wood, Lowe, Bias, Gannon, and Jordan. Most of players I followed were African American. As I watched from my hotel room, The Tournament reminded me that it was within my lifetime that the teams that l loved to watch play had first allowed African Americans on the court.

Billy Jones was the first to break the ACC color-barrier at the University of Maryland in 1965, the year before I was born. It took another five years for all the teams to become integrated with Clemson and Georgia Tech finally integrating around 1970 or 1971. By the early to mid 70’s African American players were in key roles on most ACC teams and they were leading teams like Maryland, Carolina, and NC State to national prominence. So, I never really knew the ACC as anything but integrated. However, the reality was that the ugliness of overt racism in the conference was not that far in the past and its echoes remained present even if a young kid like me watching the games on TV had no idea.

Integration did not come easily to the ACC. Many school alumni objected in extremely offensive ways. African American players were harassed and many places they traveled to with their teams in the earliest days were segregated creating issues for where teams could eat or stay. Coaches like Dean Smith saw a moral wrong and saw an opportunity to address racial discrimination by putting African American Players on the court. They were willing to stand up to powerful people who opposed integrating their teams. It was not an easy path to follow, but the ACC was made better by the players and coaches who rose to the challenge.

When I graduated from highschool, I went to NC State. I was drawn to NC State for the basketball as much as for the chance to study engineering. These days, I do not follow the basketball team much, but l do attend annual alumni receptions in DC to keep up with State’s progress as a world class research university. These events always have interesting speakers from the University community. In 2019, the speaker was Dr. Walt Wolfram, Director of the North Carolina Language and Life Project. That event was far more educational than I expected.

At that reception, we watched a segment of Talking Black in America that Dr. Wolfram had contributed to. Like The Tournament did this past week, that documentary segment and Dr. Wolfram taught me some important lessons about our history and race. At the risk of over simplifying, our history of chattel slavery and subsequent segregation contributed to the devolvement of different ways of speaking within the African American Community. Dr. Wolfram explained that when Africans were brought to North America as slaves they were intentionally separated from people who spoke the same language. As a result they were forced to develop new languages derived from multiple sources to communicate. After slavery ended and well into the 20th century, policies that segrated blacks from whites resulted in further development of language patterns that were unique to the the African American commiunity. Objectively, Dr. Wolfram explained, the language development among the African American Community is not one of improper language use but rather an incredible example of human adaptability. The right view of our different ways of speaking is to embrace them, work to understand them, and not to try to suppress them. They are part of the beauty of humanity.

This brings me to a recent bill submitted for consideration in Virginia General Assembly that was aimed at preventing “Critical Race Theory” from being taught in our public schools. Among the things it sought to block was that teaching “proper language usage” might be oppressive to members of another race. Because of what I learned from Dr. Wolfram, I find this concept to be ignorant of the reality of the rich cultural fabric of our country and the fact that forcing people to conform to “proper language usage” is oppressive. Understanding the issue of language and how it affects learning and development should be embraced not hidden from sight.

Failing to meet people where they are is stifling to their ability to reach their full potential. In this regard, I cannot help but wonder if the ACC coaches of the late 60’s and early 70’s had thought like some Virginia Legislators are today if we would have ever seen the likes of Michael Jordan, David Thompson, or Len Bias amaze us on the basketball court. Just imagine if they had said, “Charlie Scott doesn’t play like everyone else, he can’t play in the ACC,” then just how boring the games would have been.

Sticking our heads in the sand is a bad idea. The fact of the matter is, I could have gone through life blissfully unaware of the overt racism of our past and my home state. l could ignore how the policies of the not to distant past put African Americans at a disadvantage. I could pretend that biases do not still manifest themselves in a myriad of ways across society and make it harder for some to navigate through life. This all might relieve me of some guilt, but I would be lying to myself and in my ignorance, l could not make forward progress. So too it goes with our society. We cannot make forward progress if we are not willing to identify our faults and take steps to correct them. Worse still, if we let our systemic biases go unaddressed, we will miss out on the brilliance of someone changing the world in same way that African Americans transformed ACC basketball back in the day.

In the end, enabling all to achieve their fullest takes nothing away from me. I am certain that in seeing everyone achieve their best and by creating a world that is fair for all that I have only gain and nothing to lose.

Oh yeah, I am from Western North Carolina, I Talk Mountain on occasion, and I am damn proud of it.