“Every team I ever played for, that’s what we were, a collection of dangling parts, limbs of one singular black-boy body. First in little league at 8, then junior high, then in high school where it ended, we were a body submitted for seasoning, in advance of what the world held in wait. I remember the dread I felt daily at school in anticipation of football practice, the blows to be taken that evening, the feel of my body gone grimy, the nausea rising in my belly. This rite of passage, it seemed to me, had been made brutal intentionally, meant to wring the boy out of our collective young man-ness, drain us, leave us spent, the way orgasms had begun to only a few years before.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/frederickmckindra/why-i-cant-leave-football-behind
Frederick McKindra 