UAA Conversations About Race and Racism: Andrew Whitaker

March 16, 2021

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Andrew Whitaker is a senior captain for both the football and track & field programs at Washington University. He is a pre-med student pursuing a biomedical engineering degree and serves as co-Community Outreach Coordinator for WashU’s Black Letterwinning Athlete Coalition (BLAC). Whitaker earned the 2021 Fritz Pollard Trophy, which honors a college football player who has exemplified courage, community values, and exceptional performance on the field.

The UAA “Conversations About Race and Racism” series seeks to lift the voices of people of color and recognize the challenges faced in both athletics and academics at the collegiate level. By sharing personal stories, we hope to elevate the conversation about race to raise awareness and bring about change.

A Defining Moment: Police Interaction

Heading to indoor track practice one day last winter, Whitaker encountered an event all too familiar to Black men in the U.S. “I was getting ready go to practice around 4 p.m. from my off-campus house. I was wearing athletic gear and had a backpack, shoes, and spikes with me in addition to a package that was delivered to my house that I was bringing to a friend. I walked out of my house playing music and headed to my car that was across the street, a 2006 Sienna minivan with a blown speaker and high school stickers that won’t come off,” he laughed. “I live near an intersection and saw a cop car. I told myself to keep walking, opened my car door and put my stuff down. Before I even put the key into the ignition, the cop car lights go on.”

In a data report gathered by the St. Louis Police Department itself in 2018, Black drivers experienced 66.4% of the vehicle stops despite only making up 45.7 percent of the city’s population. In Whitaker’s case, he didn’t even get to start the car.

“I heard the cop on the loudspeaker say, ‘Get out of the car.’ I immediately went into fight or flight mode. I was thinking if I say the wrong thing, I could get shot. If I say the right thing, I could get shot. He told me to put my hands on the car and I stayed silent. He patted me down, turned me around, and asked me what the package was. At this point, he still doesn’t even know my name. I said, ‘I can show you that I am a WashU student and went to show my ID and he put his hand on his gun. I almost got shot for showing ID a moment after he already patted me down. Now I am wondering how to navigate this situation without getting shot.”

“The cop kept saying the only reason he was doing this is because they have had a lot of packages stolen in the neighborhood repeatedly like he was trying to justify it to himself,” he continued. “I could see the fear in his eyes that he was afraid of me. I suggested we walk up the stairs to my house to show I live there. I put the key in the house and open the door and asked, ‘Are we good?’ He paused and said no and asked me for my name and birthday to make sure I didn’t have a criminal record. Finally, he let me go.”

Eventually, after the George Floyd murder, Whitaker shared his harrowing story with his teammates. “It was impactful for them to hear it from me, that it can happen even to me. I was across the street from my house and before I even had the chance to turn on the ignition to my car, I almost got shot. It is not the first time I have been pulled over. I know it can happen to me and anyone who looks like me,” he pointed out. “It can happen to a leader on your team. The cop didn’t know who I am or am going to be. He didn’t care that I am captain of two teams or that I am going to be a doctor. All he knew was that I was Black. That was enough for him to not take my word. This was a pretty impactful experience. This kind of thing isn’t going anywhere. If I had challenged the cop, I would have been arrested. People would think it was just another Black man doing something wrong. There was no video. If it had gone another way, it would have been just another story you would never hear about.”

Misconceptions

“A lot of people find me very intimidating and don’t normally engage with me until I say something. I recognize that will be even more common after I graduate and am not on a college campus. I have had a much bigger issue with teachers than I expected with many assuming I was lazy or stupid,” remarked Whitaker, whose work ethic was instilled in him at a young age. “My grandfather worked as a farmer and moved to Detroit to work on an assembly line, working hard to provide for his family. My dad, who is of one of 11 children, is a doctor and I feel lucky not to be growing up on the streets of Detroit. My parents put me in good public schools, stressing academics and a strong work ethic. A lot of Black people don’t have what I have. There aren’t many Black people in my classes.”

He has, like so many Black student-athletes across the UAA, dealt with microaggressions about the way he speaks. “People ask, ‘Why do you talk white?’ as if Black people cannot be intelligent and speak well. The other thing they don’t think about is code-switching. I don’t always talk the way I am around them,” he stated.

Challenges at a Predominantly White Institution

“Although I attend a PWI public school, WashU was a gigantic culture shift for me. It was a new environment and I had to learn how to navigate it. My coaches put me with roommates who were also Black and I am so thankful that they did that,” he disclosed. “That gave me one space where I could go and not have to code-switch or have to put on a bit of a mask. I didn’t have to be perfect in my room. I could just relax.”

He acknowledges that his experience was not necessarily the norm. “I have had a lot easier time adjusting than other Black people, especially those from inner-city Chicago, for example, who are used to being in classrooms with a majority of people who looked like them,” he reported. “I think WashU has one of the best cultures in the UAA with regard to Black student-athletes, but we still have work to do to make sure our teammates feel comfortable in social situations. It can be tough for Black student-athletes to feel comfortable on teams.”

Whitaker at the opening ceremony for the Annika Rodriguez Scholars Program, which recognizes students of exceptional merit who demonstrate academic and leadership achievements, and passion for community

One issue that particularly frustrates Whitaker is when people say they don’t want to talk about politics or get involved. “That is really problematic. It shows the privilege you have that you can even say that. Those thoughts lead to actions, which lead to habits,” he explained. “If we don’t change our words or thoughts, how can we change the community? We have to engage in dialogue. Problems won’t get fixed if we don’t address or even identify them. People become so comfortable in the culture we are in right now. It is more common in the white community, but it happens in the Black community as well, just for different reasons. For Black people, it is ‘We have tried to make things better, but it didn’t work so we are giving up hope.’ For white people, it is more of ‘What we have tried always works out fine because I stay comfortable.’ They wonder why they should change their complacent life for you.”

Advice for Other Black Student-Athletes

“One of my missions has been to make Black recruits comfortable. When there is a recruit who looks like me on campus, one of my objectives is to plan their whole day out. I show them the culture, the sports, everything about the campus like I am giving them a full-day tour of WashU,” he communicated. “It is easier being on the track and football teams because we have more student-athletes of color. When schools recruit and bring in more Black student-athletes, it makes it so much easier for us to be ourselves around the team.”

For all his leadership and actively supporting multiple social issues, Whitaker notes that sometimes the best thing a person of color can do is to unplug. “I have to emotionally detach myself from a lot of situations. If you stay in the news cycle, seeing Black people constantly being harassed by police or the discrimination against women and Muslims in this country and abroad, it can be all-consuming. I have that empathy, but at times it is hard to function and be emotionally present,” he divulged. “There are times when it is easier to look at the tasks at hand for that day, to have a mindset of, ‘I will get this done today and take each day as it comes.’ I try not to think too far in the future though I do have certain plans. I try to stay in the present moment.”

Whitaker, John Harry Wagner, Eddie Wintergalen, and Jason Singer captured the 4×400-meter relay title at the 2019 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships, erasing nearly three seconds off their best time to post the 14th fastest time in Division III history

One of the ways he has recently started practicing self-care is meditation. “I picked it up recently and take out 10 minutes a day for it. I focus on my breath and it helps destress me, which is particularly important this year with so much competition having been removed,” he noted. “Another important thing is to hang around people with different experiences. There is a tendency for people to only hang out with their teammates, but that is not a very diverse group. Who you see on a daily basis and who your closest friends are define you and you find yourself having the same taste in friends. When you experience different people, and try different things, you grow as a person.”

Role of Allies

Whitaker thinks one of the key components to true allyship is empathy. “If we are friends and you are having an issue, then I am having an issue. You can’t be halfway friends with me. I don’t understand that mindset. If you are my teammate, you are like family. How can you look the other way when I am struggling?” he pronounced. “Real family are always there for one another. When we see things that way, we can fix so many issues. When you work passionately together for solutions, it becomes easier to convince people that real change can happen. Our reality is that people respect athletes like Tom Brady or LeBron James. At any level, we have a platform.”

Whitaker’s cheering section at a WashU football game

One of the ways he thinks allies can have the most influence is in their own circles. “Talk about hard issues with your friends. We are often hesitant to do so because we want to avoid conflict or don’t want to share an opinion that others may see as controversial. Teammates are going to have different opinions, but that should not prevent us from engaging in conversations,” he recommended. “I understand we can’t just go from zero to 10, but you can start from a point of believing your teammate is not being deliberately malicious so when they say something misinformed, educate them. Not in a mansplaining ‘I know more than you’ way, but more along the lines of, ‘I think you may be seeing this from a different perspective.’”

He encourages people to think critically. “Media and both parties are harmful in terms of creating conversations. A lot of people don’t think for themselves. They just copy and paste what they see on social media. Sometimes they don’t even believe it, but they share it,” he made known. “If someone jokes about something that is not okay, it is okay to say something. Don’t let it go just because they are your friends. It is hard to check your friends, but it is important to hold them and yourself accountable.”

Roles of Teams and Coaches

“What the track student-athletes have been doing is having monthly conversations about different issues, not just Black issues or women’s issues. We tackle a different issue each month. We did have a conversation about deconstructing systemic racism and things like that we don’t normally talk about,” he said. “We are trying to figure out the best way to talk about these things. At the same time, it is hard for me because these are the issues I have seen and talked about my whole life. It is important to emphasize certain things more than others, but you have to be deliberate to create habits, not to just check off a box. These conversations are happening more and more. Football is a lot different now than it was my freshman year. There is still work to do, but we are starting to form habits of communication.”

Whitaker admits the pandemic has added challenges. “The toughest part is when I don’t see most of my teammates. I don’t always want to be talking about social issues. I want to compete and have fun things to do like game nights, witch hunts, and social events that allow us to have the best of both worlds,” he articulated.

Being a captain of two teams, he thinks it is appropriate if he is held to a higher standard and thinks the same should apply to coaches. “Coaches, like captains, should set an example. In this case, they should educate themselves as much as they can about their student-athletes of color. We want to see them practice what they preach, to be part of important conversations,” he remarked. “It is crucial to give people space to have dialogue. Sometimes we get too focused on the day-to-day aspect of sports from training to making sure people are doing what they need to do in order to get better. In track, we have a lot of moving pieces with different practice times so that can be tough, but if something is important, we can make time for it. It doesn’t always have to be a Zoom meeting with the entire team, but it is important to be talking about race.”

He is confident WashU’s BLAC chapter will continue to grow. “I expect it to cross more teams and get our teams to be closer. My teams have normally been pretty close with a couple other teams, but having BLAC helps close the gap between teams. We all have busy schedules so setting aside time to be part of the group is great,” he stated. “Eventually, we will be able to have in-person events and really allow people to get to know people outside of their bubbles. One of the most important aspects of BLAC is producing future leaders who are willing to speak up. They can be impactful in finding more allies and growing more educated together. Even if they aren’t convinced about everything they hear, the repetition will drive home the message whether they realize it or not.”

As a community organizer for the chapter, he envisions a deeper connection between the students on campus and the people in the surrounding area. “A lot of my teammates do community work on their own. I would like to see normalized across all teams. That makes a difference and can further the perception that WashU student-athletes do care about the community. Ideally, I would want teams to get a jump on community service, whether in the preseason or non-traditional season. We want to expose team members to different experiences.”