Headlines

HEAT’s Deng Explains Overcoming Early Racisim

Basketball Insiders

Sports Editor

Updated 2 years ago on October 15, 2021 • 1 min read

Disclosure

We sometimes use affiliate links in our content, when clicking on those we might receive a commission – at no extra cost to you. By using this website you agree to our terms and conditions and privacy policy.

On good days, the worst hurled at Luol Deng in grade school were the racist slurs a Sudanese refugee child was far too young to comprehend yet never quite able to forget.

Samara, meaning black.

Hunga bunga, mockery for ape.

Shakshuka, epithet from a cheap north African meal.

On bad days, those classroom slurs escalated to slinging fists in the schoolyard.

“It was just constant,” Deng, a Miami HEAT forward, says 25 years later. “I had this one teacher, and as I got older and translated things he used to say, it was racist and hatred stuff he was saying toward me and my brother. A lot of times, we fought because of that stuff.”

Yet this was the better life.

via Michael Wallace of ESPN

Add Basketball Insiders to your Google News Feed!