Sneak’ Dissing

As she laced up her sneakers, she felt everyone looking at her in the locker room.

She peered up and then stood. With a quick pan around the puzzled faces and laughs and muffled snickers, Aleesa Mossen furrowed her brow.

“What?”

“Are those your new sneakers…for real?”

“Yes! What’s wrong with them?”

“Girl, you look like you have eggplants on your feet.” Janice Bedford then pullled out her phone and snapped photos of her teammate’s footwear. She even included an emoji of the nightshade family.

The purple hue of the basketball shoes caused the other women to laugh even harder as the looked at the graphics on Janice’s phone that she posted to social media.

“Why are you wearing those?”

“It’s history. I struck a deal with this company that supplies products that send up racial slurs, archtypes, and stereotypes. Not only do these shoes match our purple and green, they toss back the racial epithet about black people resembling eggplants.”

That stopped all of the laughter.

“Wow, Leese. I didn’t know you would be so political this season,” Careene Bush remarked. The other players surrounded Aleesa.

“Yeah, that’s totally cool to be taking that kind of stand in this climate.”

The sneakers looked like purple tubes. Incredibly ugly, the wearer wished only to send a message to the sport, to the world that racism is evil. It still didn’t get through to millions of people, maybe billions. But Aleesa steeled herself and made sure that this fashion statement would actually mean something. Geenie Green walked up to Aleesa.

“Look, as long as you can box out, grab those rebounds and make your threes, I don’t care what sneakers you wear.” She smiled a little. Aleesa rose to her feet and hugged Geenie.

The coach entered and blew her whistle.