I would love to see Jeff do a follow up piece on this with quotes from athletes with their thoughts of the Bozeman area are, and what everyone around the community can do to make their transition a little easier.
Commentary: Try looking at things from another angle
By Jeff Welsch, Chronicle Sports Editor
Admit it.
When we putter around whitebread Bozeman, where cultural diversity means some Anglos drive 10-year-old bio-diesel Passats and the other Anglos drive sparkling-new SUVs, and we happen upon a young African-American, we instantly think:
Athlete.
Montana State University.
Probably football. Maybe basketball.
Innocently, of course, but nevertheless so.
Yes?
Now let's try putting ourselves in the cleats, er, shoes of an African-American in Bozeman or any other bucolic little college town.
Sure, many will tell us that Bozeman is as accommodating as any place they've lived.
MSU coaches James Clark and Junior Adams, former athletes both, wax enthusiastically about their life-altering experiences here.
And yet, many African-Americans will also tell us that it's impossible to fully appreciate life for a minority in an Anglo-dominant culture like ours.
For a semblance of understanding, we'd have to attend one of Clark and Adams' new weekly Focused and Motivated Minorities gatherings at MSU.
Their mission, explained in a recent story by Carol Schmidt of MSU's News Services, is to provide minority athletes a sanctuary of sorts.
A place to openly share experiences with fellow minorities.
Given that so many African-Americans have found fulfillment here, you might question the need for such a group.
Therein lies the paradox.
Clark, Adams and other African-Americans share an affectionate bond with the Gallatin Valley, yet a disquieting undercurrent also lurks.
This is still a state where some alums grumble about giving football and basketball scholarships to minorities.
This is still such a mono-cultured valley that a white separatist named Kevin McGuire sees fertile ground for the nourishment of his group's twisted views.
Most important, this is still a community where minorities are substantially outnumbered; culture shock is real.
Hence, FAMM.
Though I have yet to attend a FAMM gathering, I was a featured guest at three similar meetings at Oregon State, where Adams' football career began.
The gatherings were born from frustration with police, media and general stereotypes, all simmering until boiling over after an incident involving Adams, several other football players and students at a party.
Emotions were so charged that the African-American friend orchestrating the gatherings was initially apprehensive about me facing a room full of surly 220-pound human monoliths.
That first session, conducted town-hall style, remains one of the most enlightening experiences of my career.
The one and only rule is a sacred Las Vegas-esque "what happens here, stays here," but if you were fortunate enough to enter such a cultural inner circle, you would learn that ...
* African-American athletes in predominantly Anglo communities are on guard against getting pulled over for "driving while black."
* If a black athlete and white woman are walking down the street, the woman might be asked "is everything all right?"
* Minority athletes view the police and media with equal wariness, mistrust or disdain.
Most exasperating is the broad brush minorities are too often painted with in communities lacking cultural diversity.
Stereotypes seem inescapable, even in a well-intentioned valley whose mantra is "Where Rivers and Cultures Meet."
We see an African-American walking down the street, and we not only think "athlete," we also are wont to think "brother from the 'hood who escaped the guns, drugs and gangs of the concrete jungle to find peace, direction and a home here in Pleasantville."
In some cases, it's true; in more cases, it's not.
Each athlete, African-American or otherwise, has a unique yarn to spin.
My industry's primary flaw, I explained at OSU, is that we aren't doing enough to counter stereotypes by taking readers beneath the athletes' armor and jersey numbers.
Show the biology major in a lab coat conducting an experiment. Show the secondary education major reading to school kids. Show the engineer working with structures.
Quite likely, then, as we putter around whitebread Bozeman in our bio-diesel Passats and high-octane SUVs, we'd see an African-American and think:
"Hey, that's the guy who ...!"
Or, better yet, we'd think absolutely nothing at all.
Or a couple corners from LaGrange...ya'll know that little school just outside Columbus that has seven corners in the NFL.
