Jaden Russell '22 Recruiting Profile

Jaden Russell

Who am I? 

“Am I really black?” I grew up in predominantly white schools and was raised around white people. My experiences in black barber shops are always funny because when the lanky 6 foot 2 black kid sits in the barber’s chair he’s automatically a D1 basketball recruit. Imagine the barber’s surprise when I tell him I’m a golfer. Not to mention the look of shock on the other customers' faces who overhear our conversation. Golf is considered an “old white man’s game,” and the reality is that I am one of the very few black golfers in the tournament circuit. At my high school, I'm one of four black students in my grade. I remember when I first started Country Day in the sixth grade, white and black kids alike gave me strange looks because I spoke properly and wasn’t the black stereotype they saw on television. These situations made me question myself multiple times throughout my young adult life. Where did I fit?

In sixth grade I moved from a public school where 45% of students received free lunch to a private school in Miami Shores, Florida with celebrity parents and peers stepping out of Rolls-Royce motor cars at drop-off every morning. According to “USA School Info” my new school has a black student population of one percent. My parents aren't celebrities; we don't own a Rolls-Royce, and I don't look like everyone else at school. How was I supposed to fit in?  

After my first day of school in sixth grade, I remember coming home to my parents in tears because of a racist comment that one of my classmates said to me. I held in the frustration and sadness that comment caused until the end of the day at pick-up. At that point my parents had a serious conversation with me about what it means to be black in The United States Of America.  Though I can’t say that I fully understood everything they told me, I was sure of one thing: as a black man living in this country, my experiences, and therefore my life, would be different from that of my peers.  This was a fact that I was going to have to learn to deal with, so instead of tormenting myself with it, I decided to learn how to navigate my experiences.

Shortly after settling in I figured out that making friends wasn't hard for me because of my self- deprecating sense of humor and inviting personality. Instead of worrying about the people who ignorantly (and sometimes maliciously), made racist comments and jokes, I focused on my relationship with the people who would ultimately become my best friends. 

Now, towards the end of my high school experience, my school is making efforts to become more inclusive, but when it costs over $25,000 to attend a prep school, diversity is going to be limited no matter what. So I learned that instead of relying on the institution, I needed to find happiness myself. Through golf I was able to do this. When I joined the varsity golf team in eighth grade I was brought into a second family and exposed to new people. When I'm on the golf course I'm not worried about homework or whatever is going on at home. For four hours out of the day I'm either practicing alone or playing eighteen holes with friends. These friends that I made on the golf team displayed true friendship. They weren't a diverse group but our relationship went beyond the color of our skin. Even though I was the only minority in our friend group, race wasn't relevant when we were together because we all were unalike in our own ways. Finding quality friends made me realize how unnecessary questioning the validity of my blackness was. At the end of the day all I had to do was look in the mirror.