Terrell Evans feels lucky that the many intimidating interactions he had with police as a kid growing up black in a low-income neighbourhood on the west side of Las Vegas never turned deadly.
When he watched the video of George Floyd’s death, a black man killed in police custody in Minneapolis last month, he felt angry, sad and fed up. “Enough is enough, right?”
And he thought to himself that the black man pleading for air under a white police officer’s knee could have been him or anyone he loves.
“That could have been me at a very young age,” he said. “So, it’s something that needs to be talked about.”
Evans, 29, moved to Victoria in 2011 to play basketball for the Vikes and study sociology at the University of Victoria on a full scholarship. He has lived in the city for most of the last nine years. He spent a year playing professional basketball in Austria and Italy.
He runs The Grind Basketball, a youth basketball program that serves children from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds across Greater Victoria.
The organization’s name is a nod to his difficult childhood and his determination to train hard as a basketball player to create opportunities for himself.
“It was a grind for me to get out of the circumstances I was in,” Evans said.
His interactions with police in his hometown started at a young age. He remembers being stopped and questioned while walking home from playing basketball at his community centre when he was 12 or 13. In high school, the stops became more intimidating, and he was pulled over frequently. Once, he and a group of friends were pulled over, handcuffed and made to sit on the curb.
“They say driving while being black, but, you know, it’s just racism. That’s what it is. We were just young boys,” he said.
He’s close to his large family back in Las Vegas and he worries about their safety. He doesn’t know how to answer questions from his young nieces and nephews about why police and white people keep killing unarmed black people.
“They’re like five, six, seven years old, and what do you say? It’ll make you sick inside a little bit, because you want to be able to answer these questions for kids,” he said.
Evans said racism might be more overt in the U.S., but he experiences it in Victoria, too. It comes in the form of systemic inequalities and microagressions.
“Just because I wear a black hoodie and Jordan 1s and some cargo pants, they just think I’m up to no good, like I’m about to fail whatever I’m about to do,” he said.
Evans said one major difference between Victoria and Las Vegas is that police are more restrained when it comes to using force here.
He wants people in Victoria to listen to the experiences of black people and people of colour in the city and around the world and understand the history behind it.
“People have to get comfortable being uncomfortable,” he said.
Real change will come from educating children about racism and privilege and ensuring they grow up with respect for everyone, Evans said. That’s something he tries to do through his coaching.
“One thing I preach is, listen, I don’t care who your parents are, whatever background you come from, you’re learning to respect one another, love each other and work hard together and work as a team. And that’s life,” he said.
Sunday’s anti-black racism rally in Victoria’s Centennial Square was the first one Evans has ever attended. It meant a lot to him to be there, and his participation made his grandma proud. She grew up in Arkansas, “the heart of racism in the deep south,” Evans said, and she was active during the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
Evans was joined at the rally by many of the kids he coaches, who came to show support for him and the movement.
“It was really powerful.”
He’s watched similar rallies spring up in his hometown over the past couple of weeks, drawing people to the area who wouldn’t otherwise come to his side of town.
“We all should be proud of who we are, but also what we can do in the world as powerful individuals if we come collectively together,” he said.
