Many Black people are discovering joy and a sense of community through activities they once considered inaccessible. From golf to skydiving, these pursuits offer a chance to escape the rigors of life and explore new passions. This trend highlights the freedom and flexibility Black people are embracing, and how they are utilizing it to enhance their well-being.
Many Black people are finding joy, community, thrills and a bigger sense of the world through activities that were once inaccessible. 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. 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 “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.“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.”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.”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?”“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 second
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