Corporations support Affirmative Action

[tw]

Playing on people's emotions was easier than I realized. We were in a tournament in the home town of its perennial champion. I played on my teammate’s emotions by saying they were a racist town. Well, on the mat is either fear or confident aggression. That contest is the most powerful mind game I have experienced.

They won the tournament. But nobody would know until the very end. It was that close. In the finals, we won six out of the seven matches against their people. Emotions ran that deep.

One might have questioned my myth when one of their 12 was black. Did not matter. Once I had planted that emotion, facts no longer mattered.

Well the myth even worked on me. I could not keep their guy down. So I ran him out of bounds. Then turned and told him to stop running out of bounds. The ref stepped in before he could hit me. Then I pinned him rather aggressively.

At the end, I apologized for being so unnecessarily aggressive. Two years later, he told a friend how angry he still was.

I know exactly where that confidence and aggression came from. I played the reverse race card. Played on emotions. And strangely enough, my myth even inspired me. I had no idea that emotions based in a lie were so powerful.

At the time, I had no idea what I had done even to myself. I knew it was a myth. Only later realized how powerful and easy an emotion can overwhelm.

Nobody defeated that team. That year, we almost did by using emotions. Emotion is powerful tool. That emotion can also be a dangerous one. Affirmative action is about confronting that bias that we all have; and do not realize.