I have been fortunate in life — perhaps due to my upbringing where everyone regardless of gender, did the same chores around the house — to be able to have women as friends. I lived in a living coop for a year where there were four men and four women. I have been able to appreciate women and respect them professionally and personally. And some of my best friends and colleagues like the later Betty Franklin-Hammonds were women. Everything didn’t have to be based on sex. There was so much more to life and relationships, although it did have its time and place.

And that attitude served me well as a journalist the past 22 years because women are more than 50 percent of the world’s population and play an increasingly important role in it. Imagine being a journalist and being cut off from half of the sources of stories that you want to write about.

And just as an aside, I love football, especially the Green Bay Packers whom I have been watching with my brothers for the past 60 years and enjoy meeting up for a good cigar and some Jack to discuss politics and the issues of the day. Sometimes those groups are men and sometimes men and women. I’m not going to give societal norms of what gender roles should be to stop me from experiencing a good life.

Anyway, back to the WWOCN fundraiser. By the time that I got to Park and Regent Streets, I knew I was possibly in trouble because there were groups of Badger fans headed to the Kohl Center for the Marquette-Wisconsin basketball game. And as I drove down Dayton Street toward the DoubleTree, my dread intensified because the traffic was inching along and pedestrians were king.

As I got to the DoubleTree parking lot, the gate was down and I had to await the attendant. He, an elderly Euro-American man, told me that the parking lot was reserved for people staying at the hotel and event attendees.

I thought I was in luck. But when I told him I was there to attend the event, he looked at me as if I was from Mars. He just wasn’t comprehending me. So I said that I was there to attend the WWOCN event and I think it was being held on the first floor — where it always is. He still wasn’t comprehending me. After going back and forth 4-5 times, it finally dawned on him that I was attending the Wisconsin Women of Color event and finally let me through.

When I left the event at the same time one of the other WWOCN members who arrived after me, I asked her if she had a hard time getting in. She said no. She was just attending the WWOCN event and he let her through. It felt like — and probably was — a case where I did not fit the profile of what a WWOCN event attendee would look like and so he just didn’t and couldn’t comprehend. Ironically, WWOCN had honored me for my continued commitment to WWOCN and the community. Perhaps if the guy didn’t hold me up, I would have received the award in person. How I enjoy events with my WWOCN sisters.

And the incident reminded me when I attended my first Alcorn State University football game in the Louisiana Superdome back in 1975, shortly after it opened. I had a motorcycle and my friend Dwight Thomas and I rode to Hazlehurst and stayed in a Holiday Inn before completing the ride the next morning to New Orleans and just made it to the game versus Gambling State University. Yes, I was torn.

The plan was that we would stay in the hotel with Alcorn’s band. A couple of my roommates were in the band. So after the game, we went and partied in the French Quarter and got back to the hotel about 1 a.m. I went up to my roommates’ hotel room and was shortly followed by the hotel detectives. They said, “You might think you’re staying here tonight, but you aren’t.” And so I was escorted out of the hotel even though Dwight who was standing right there in the hotel room was not. I guess me being a “spot of salt in a shaker of pepper” made it easy for them to spot the perp.

As soon as I started driving my motorcycle on the Interstate out of time, high as a kite, I was rained on and that probably sobered me up and saved my life. I had to drive 4-5 hours back to Alcorn and slept in the visitor’s area of our dorm because I didn’t have a key to the room.

In each case, I didn’t fit the bill of whom the decision maker, the person in authority, thought belonged and should be involved or allowed to stay.

It’s funny how perceived identity works, cloaking the reality of life from those who are always, it seems, making decisions about the rest of us. And they wonder why so many Brothers are locked up in jail.

Isn’t it a pity? Isn’t it a shame, to quote George Harrison?