Personal essays
On why we can’t give up on others
A chance encounter
As I walked through Kings Cross yesterday to board a train to Leeds, I passed a guy wearing a Cleveland Browns hat.
“Did you go to the game yesterday?” I asked.
The Browns had been in London to lose to the Minnesota Vikings.
Well, that’s not correct. They didn’t come to London to lose - but if you’ve been following the team for even a little while you know they kind of did.
“I did,” the guy said to me in the thickest Scottish accent you’ve ever heard.
“How’d the look?” I asked.
He shrugged and said, “not bad. They even looked like they might win there at the end.”
“But,” I began and paused.
“But,” he agreed, “they are the Browns.”
Quantum
This is NOT an example of what George Bush meant when he referred to as the “soft bigotry of low expectations” but it feels like the non-critical version.
Bush was referring to the dangers of lowering expectations for students of certain races and ethnicities.
He also said, “If you have low expectations, you’re going to get lousy results.”
There is a quantum theory of sports fandom. In physics, whether this thing is a wave or a particle depends on the observer. In sports whether my team is succesful or fails depends on my actions in some way.
Every time I go to a game in person, they lose.
Or.
Every time I bet money on them, they lose.
Or.
Just when I start to care again, they lose.
That’s not really quantum theory, that’s just the Browns.
Don’t give up on them
The Scottish guy told me he’d been a fan since he was 16. He couldn’t even remember why he’d chosen the Browns as the team he rooted for.
“The new kid looked pretty good,” he told me about the new Quarterback the Browns had started this week. “They had him on a pretty short leash. He wasn’t allowed to do much creative.”
I nodded.
“It looked like they might score at the end and win the game,” the man said, unable to let it go.
“But,” he said, “they went three and out and we knew it was all over.”
“Funny,” I said, “If the score had been the other way around with the Browns up with under a minute left, my brother and I would have been texting each other asking how they would manage to lose.”
As I said, I’m sure the notion applies in more significant situations, but there really is something to the silent bigotry of low expectations.
I try to remember that, as Bush said, “We must not tolerate a system that gives up on people.”
And suddenly we aren’t really talking about the Browns anymore. Are we?
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 289. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe