A grown woman sees some lacrosse players and is “alarmed” because her daughter is in the general vicinity.
It was the clacking noise of their cleated shoes across the asphalt parking lot that first caught my attention. I was waiting to pick up my younger daughter from a basketball camp she attended at UNC-Chapel Hill this past summer. Then I saw the hot, tired male lacrosse players, their sticks resting on their adolescent shoulders. I was alarmed. I knew my reaction was irrational, but the boys also were attending a UNC camp, assigned to an adjoining dorm.
Would she generalize in that way about any other group? Would she be as “alarmed” if black adolescents approached her in the mall because of recent stories about gang violence? Would she run the other way if Muslim-looking men got on an airplane with her? And would she admit it so openly in a column in a newspaper if she did? What is it about lacrosse players that makes her feel so comfortable about her prejudice? Oh, wait. They’re white and widely thought to be upper-class preps school products. Could that explain it?
p.s. In the interest of full disclosure I must tell you that all three of my children played lacrosse, including my daughter, and one son is still playing in college.
