Black adults embrace sports that defy stereotypes and bring joy

Tonya Parker was not looking to add another activity to her life. She traveled the world as a flight attendant and regularly practiced ballet and yoga. She was not searching for new friends, either. A graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, she had plenty.

With two grown children who made her proud, Parker’s life was full — or so she thought.

The Covid-19 pandemic led her to a sport she had considered mundane: golf. She was invited to a few golf events and participated. She struggled. But one day, thinking of how tired she was of her friends making fun of her golf game, Parker secretly began taking lessons. Soon enough, her friends noticed improvement. And she noticed her own growing passion for the sport.

“I never thought that a Black woman like me, 63 years old, would ever find something that I just absolutely love at this point of my life,” Parker said. “It’s opened up a whole new world for me.”

It’s not just Parker. Many Black people are finding joy in activities that were once inaccessible because of systemic racism or were not culturally traditional pursuits in Black communities. These forays have become emblematic of the ways Black people celebrate the freedom and flexibility they have, and how they are using it to escape the rigors of life — personally, socially and politically.

The activities have health benefits, too, such as stanching the release of cortisol, a so-called “stress hormone” that affects blood pressure, blood sugar and inflammation, said Linda Goler Blount, president of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, which focuses on health and wellness for Black women. 

“What these folks are doing is giving themselves not only something else to think about, but also giving additional meaning to their lives,” said Blount, who is also an epidemiologist. “It doesn’t have to be an expensive activity, either.”

She said her sister enjoys adult coloring books as that escape. “The cortisol piece happens in the brain, and so by finding that joy, you can spend less time thinking and catastrophizing about the other stuff that comes with Black life, which then lowers your cortisol level, which makes you healthier,” Blount added.

That appears to be the case with Parker.

“Discovering and loving and playing golf has definitely brought me joy,” Parker said. “I am drawn to the solitary pursuit. Although you’re with a group and there can be a lot of chatter around you. You still have this solitary pursuit that challenges you. I love that.”

It helped that she made an elusive hole-in-one after about a year of playing, sinking an 8 iron from  the 118-yard shot on the eighth hole of the Seminole Course at White Oak Golf Club south of Atlanta. “That was a major motivator for my love of the game,” she said.

“But golf is also a major escape, and it’s also meditative,” she said. “I can think about things that are joyful and not the things that are disturbing to me — while I stay focused on getting that little ball into the hole.”

Parker, who has played across the U.S. as well as in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, often plays golf with her boyfriend, Tony Hodge, a financial planner who also serves as her quasi-coach on the course. But she gets abundant satisfaction when her group of about 12 Black women in Atlanta — the Chocolate Chix With Stix, as they call themselves — get in a round most weeks during warm weather.

“It’s not easy for Black women to make new friends, especially at my age. But through golf, these ladies have been true friends and mean everything to me,” she said. “It’s priceless — and another benefit of this new thing in my life that has brought me so much joy.”

Finding joy in the sky

Baudelaire Fleurant, an airplane mechanic who lives in Big Lake, Minnesota, has found joy about 3,000 feet above the Earth. There, adrenaline pumps through his body as he prepares to jump out of an airplane.

In the last year, skydiving has become Fleurant’s way to feel fear, excitement, accomplishment and joy, all at once.

“I was working so much I didn’t have a social life,” he said. He learned about “fun diving,” where a person free-jumps out of a plane by himself and parachutes down to Earth.

“I thought: ‘That’s different,’” he recalled. “It’s really unique for Black people, really outside the circle.”

After researching the process, Fleurant decided to give it a try.

He underwent intense training at the upstart organization Veterans Skydive for Life before going up for the first time over Minnesota on a small Cessna 172 aircraft. There were three other jumpers on board. The instructor told Fleurant to go first.

“I said, ‘OK, I’m good.’” But then the door opened, and a gush of wind terrified him.

“I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ That wind hit me so hard. I couldn’t believe it. What the hell was I doing up there?”

He gathered himself. He put a foot outside the door. He looked down.

“Everything looked like Google Maps,” he said, laughing. “I’m still not ready, thinking, ‘Man, this is something else.’”

Finally, Fleurant lept. He said his only thought once he was airborne was about the parachute. Because he was on a static line, he didn’t have to pull the cord; the parachute deployed on its own after just a few seconds.

“It’s scary,” he said. “But you’re relaxed once the chute comes out — that’s a big relief.”

On the way down, Fleurant admired the view, while mostly focusing on making a safe landing, which he did.

“I landed on my back,” he said. “And I just laid there, just looked up at the sky for a good minute. I felt good. Accomplished. My adrenaline was so high.”

After five or six jumps, the fear had eased and had been replaced with the urge to flip and twist in the air.

“I feel like a bird then, like I can fly,” he said, “I’m totally relaxed. That’s a good feeling. It’s a huge stress relief, gets me away from work and politics and other stuff that can get to you.”

That escape is invaluable, said Tené T. Lewis, a professor of public health at Emory University in Atlanta. “It’s important that we do things that are not always about the hustle and grind, especially during difficult political, social and economic times,” she said. “We have to think about ways to add joy and lean into it, because otherwise the stress of the day will kill us. And that’s not hyperbole.”

Fleurant, who is of Haitian descent, said jumping does not come without its mishaps. Once he missed his zone and almost hit a house in Phoenix. On his seventh jump, he said, he fractured his wrist from a “bad landing.”

But he continues to jump — despite objections from his daughter. Fluerant became certified with 25 jumps and plans to earn a classification that would allow him to jump out of hot air balloons and helicopters.

“I wouldn’t say I’m addicted,” Fleurant said, but he doesn’t see himself “walking away from it.” He is looking forward to teaming with other Black skydivers who are part of the groups Diversify Outdoors and Melanin Base Camp.

“I really want to jump with Black people,” he said. “Those groups are really unique. I have to do that. That will be the ultimate Black joy for me.”

Going deep to find joy

At 5, Jennifer Henry’s son Jackson said he wanted to become an astronaut. A few years later, he learned astronauts trained as scuba divers. So he wanted to do that. When Jackson was 10, Henry called a scuba company about lessons. But fearful of the water, she came up with reasons for her son to stay on land for two years.

Finally, when he turned 12, “I swallowed my fears,” Henry said, and signed up Jackson for scuba lessons. The catch: He needed a dive buddy — someone to go into the ocean with him. His mom decided it would be her.

Although claustrophobic and apprehensive, “I wasn’t going to let anyone else do it,” she said.

And so began the journey in Southern California of mother and son becoming certified scuba divers together in the last year.

“It is scary, but the joy I get out of it is being in a completely unusual place,” said Henry, 41. “It’s beautiful down there and I am glad I have done this. I’m doing something that I never imagined, let alone my parents and their parents. I live my life with this whole idea of being my ancestors’ wildest dreams. And so, I think of that all the time when we’re underwater. That is the victory, that’s the freedom. And really I love seeing Jackson pursue his dream. That means everything.”

When he was a kid in elementary school, Jackson wore his astronaut costume everywhere he went, including to see the New York Philharmonic. Everyone noticed, including the performers. He was invited backstage. That was fun for Jackson, but nothing like being underwater with his mom.

“It’s pretty cool that we’ve done this together,” said Jackson, now 14. “Most moms wouldn’t do this.”

Underwater, he likes “that it’s zero gravity down there. It kind of simulates a space environment. So that’s one of my favorite things about being underwater.”

Seeing beautiful fish and vegetation thrills Jackson, too, as well as the escape. “It’s a whole different world down there with all the fish and the coral and different scenery. It feels like an alien world.”

The duo has ventured into a kelp forest, an underwater area dense with brown algae that supports vast swaths of marine life like sea otters and whales. In Jamaica, Jackson came upon a deep drop-off covered in coral that “looked like an unknown place.”

These experiences, often with the SoCal Black Scuba Divers and Snorkelers in San Diego, thrill them.

“This is not just his joy for Jackson and for me,” Henry said. “My parents and his grandparents are feeling this joy, too — three generations of joy, because every time we dive, we send videos and photos to family. They call. They ask questions. They’re excited. Cousins want to know about it. So this joy expands across generations and through our entire family. And that’s pretty special that this Black family that started off without much can now have this shared joy.”