Race is back in the headlines: at the Olympics and in politics. How about some positive reflections on race and hemophilia?
Our exceptional archivist, Richard Atwood of North Carolina, has found another book that mentions hemophilia. This one was such a surprise to me, as it takes place in Boston, my home base.
Onaje Woodbine grew up in a Roxbury apartment, a predominantly black neighborhood. Onaje lived with both his parents, who were well educated. Still, Onaje grew up in the “streets,” where the way to escape from a poor environment was to become a gangster, rapper, ball player, artist, or student. Due to his natural talent, Onaje chose street basketball.
At 17, he was recruited to a prestigious, private high school in New Jersey. Next, he enrolled at Yale University, playing basketball at an All Ivy League level for two years, before resigning from the team after his sophomore year. His resignation letter was published in 2000, in the Yale Daily News. After completing his Yale degree, Onaje enrolled at the Boston University School of Theology to earn his Ph.D. His dissertation research consisted of four years—from 2010 to 2014—of participant-observation for an ethnographic study of street basketball in the black neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan in Boston. He wrote daily field notes and conducted in-depth interviews with street basketball players, age 18 to 39. Not all of his professors at Boston University approved of his study on the religious dimensions of basketball.
Many street basketball players used the games as “lived religion” to take their minds to another place and time. The games had the patterned behavior of ritualistic and ceremonial components of religion, partially based on the history of the black church and Muscular Christianity from the YMCA that combined religion, health, and sports. While the streets provided the socializing spaces of community centers, street corners, and basketball courts, in additional to schools and churches, activities such as memorial basketball tournaments during the summer provided means to deal with premature death, violence, fatherlessness, illness, poverty and racism.
From age ten, and for the next seven years, Onaje had a constant companion and mentor named Marvin Barros Jr., who was four years older. Marvin was 6 feet 4 inches tall, skinny, and dark skinned. He also happened to have hemophilia. His swollen, painful, and fragile joints prevented him from playing basketball. He had bleeding gums at night. Instead of playing street basketball, Marvin mentored other young black men and focused on art and poetry. Before he died at age 21 due to complications of hemophilia and HIV, Marvin fathered a son named Daeshawn. The Yawkey Club named its teen center for Marvin Barros Jr. as a memorial.
You read about this fascinating mentorship and author in Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball, by Onaje X.O. Woodbine (2016). Woodbine lives and teaches philosophy and religion at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts—right down the road from me. His LinkedIn account also lists that he is Associate Professor at American University.
