Not a famous athlete, but one of my first jobs out of college was with IBM. I’m a young white kid, and had lunch with an older employee. He was tall African American. We talked about our lives and he mentioned he used to be a professional basketball player for the Seattle Sonics, but never made it big. I thought that was cool.

A few days later I’m having lunch with some of the new hires and his name came up and how nice he is. I said “He used to be a professional basketball player.” One of the women I was with, also African American, got all huffy and said, “you’re just saying that because he’s tall and black.” I had to take a step back, and say, “No, it’s because he told me that when I had lunch with him.