In a recent discussion about racial violence in Baltimore, a long-time Baltimorean and former member of one of its most storied boxing gyms had this to say about training in a boxing gym:
“One of the things I miss about going to Jake the Snake’s Baltimore Boxing Club was the camaraderie that cut across racial, ethnic and class lines. You'd have straight up lead paint addled hood rats, Mexican dishwashers, roofers from Dundalk, scary Filipino dudes and my crippled albino ass. Everyone generally looked out for one another. That place probably saved my life in some ways.”
This, too has been my experience, that when we get down to the actual hands on business of being men, that the sectarian Bull Shit of civilization washes away with the sweat and blood.
I have been in boxing gyms and have heard such good natured comments as the following, bandied about, with no hurt intended or felt, when the same comment would have cost the speaker his job in the artificial mind-screw engine we make our bread in:
“You have long arms for a white guy.”
“Hey, you have nice calves for a black dude.”
“Could you at least try and move like you’re black, instead of stalking around after him like some white monster!”
“Not too bright for being white, are you?”
“Duck—you’re not a fat head [Mexican]!”
“You’ve got some rhythm old man—sure you’re all white?”
Said one of my white fighters while I pointed out how thick Oliver’s head was by noting the space between his eyes: “So, is it safe to assume he has a racial advantage?”
This same good natured openness pervades stick fighting, in which I once had Gabriel comment to me about Rico beating me in a stick and shield bout, “What’s a matter with you—it’s just a Puerto Rican with a trash can lid!”
At Damien Kestle’s Sanctum MMA I once trained a Jewish kid, next to a black ghetto guy prepping for a tough man contest in West Virginia, while a member of Southern Maryland Skin Heads worked on his empty hand set so he could go back and school his men for the coming race war. But in the gym, we were all there for each other.
One may argue that the gym is the artificial environment. But, I surmise, that if the men in a boxing gym were dropped into a primeval wilderness at the same time as an equal number of political theorists and leaders were, that the fighters would emerge as a tribe, and the political-minded people would emerge from the ass ends of a wolf pack.
