Former star receiver Ryan Newsome is a voice of reason and reality about Aledo | Opinion
Ryan Newsome was one of the small number of Black kids who attended Aledo High School, and the former star receiver said he never experienced anything he called “overtly racist” until last summer.
Last summer, Newsome and former classmates Brittney and Danielle Trought — who were star track athletes for the Bearcats and continued their careers at TCU and UTEP — help to organize a Black Lives Matter protest in Aledo.
“If anybody ever asked me what my experience was at Aledo I always say it’s good,” he said. “But when we hosted that rally, I knew it would poke the hornet’s nest, but I thought we can do it and then I got death threats. I had no clue it was like that.
“I couldn’t believe it. It was a punch to the stomach. It hurt me a lot. I wanted to tell people how much it hurt me. I was confused. That was the closest we got to realizing that racism is real and it’s here, and it sucks, and it’s a reality that we all have to deal with it.”
When the news broke of a racist Snapcat post by three Aledo high school students last week, Newsome was not surprised. He was disgusted and disappointed.
“I talked to Brittney the next day and we were feeling down,” he said. “She said, ‘We did all of that for nothing.’ I said, ‘Stop right there. It was a success. Don’t let this dictate that what we did in the past wasn’t productive.’”
Some Aledo residents are irate at the media coverage over this incident and feel it is isolated and the reporting has been overblown. Others feel it exposes an ugly truth to their small town.
Listen to Ryan Newsome.
His experience in Aledo sounds similar to many Black students who move into mostly white communities. The experiences are mostly good, but when they are bad it’s uniquely traumatizing.
“When I was there, I wouldn’t say it was comfortable or uncomfortable from the outset,” Newsome said in a phone interview. “Now, there were some natural uncomfortabilities because you’re a minority. But you say minority you think it’s a few hundred. There were maybe 15 African-American students there when I was there, and we were tight.”
Newsome attended Aledo in his junior and senior seasons, in 2013 and 2014. He was an all-state selection for teams that won consecutive state titles.
He initially played for Texas before transferring to Arizona State for his final three college seasons, where he was a regular contributor until finishing his career in 2019.
He’s married, lives in DFW and is a pastor.
He grew up the Mid-Cities and Crowley before his family moved to Aledo.
“I am not going to paint all of Aledo with the same brush; that’s not fair,” he said. “I can’t say all of Aledo is like this, because that’s not true. There are white people there I adore and love and they know me and they see me and they hear me, and it’s love.
“There are bad people everywhere, and I’m not going to say, ‘Defund the police.’ My experience with the people that are not my color treat me equally and respect my rights as a taxpaying citizen. It’s a happy medium that is hard for us to find in America.”
The only instance he felt that crossed a line during high school was when he took his then girlfriend to a movie theater in nearby Weatherford. She was white and a member of the Aledo soccer team.
He said the looks he received made him uncomfortable. He felt like he was being profiled.
I asked him if he thought because he was an all-state athlete and a significant contributor to the football team he was insulated. He paused.
“I’d say being an athlete does shield you from what other people may go through. It can,” he said. “That’s unfortunate because you’re still not being treated equally. I’d say that being an athlete can give you a path and sometimes experiencing things that the layman African-American does not experience.
“But, even then that may not be the case. There may be (that white person) and they may just want to power trip on you.”
Newsome does not sound angry, but his tone is pragmatism laced with some sadness. He knows this is not specific to Aledo, and he has no solution.
“I don’t want to shame anybody or make them feel bad because they are a certain color,” he said. “But I am going to make them aware there are differences in how we treat each other.”
