Football, race, and unity..1971-2010

I watched a showing of "Remember the Titans" tonight.  Had seen it before. Black coach takes over a previously all-white Virginia high school football program in 1971, when, as those of us who lived back then, was a period of racial strife. See the Boston bussing crap of the 70's--this wasn't Dixie only.


The coach (Denzel Washington) has to try to get the black kids and the white kids together as a team in a very turbulent time in American history. Frankly, as a kid at the time, I never saw this stuff.  I was an Air Force kid, and had lived in so many places that race and ethnicity really didn't mean a thing to me.  But although I was born on an Air Force base in Mississippi, I've had very few travels to the South since. 


I reflect on this flick as I think about  all the "us and them" mentality we're seeing now.  I'm not going to rant on my usual things about the forces who are trying to divide us these days--the economic power that wants to make us so mad at each other that big business stays in charge of our government.  But I see that this racial division still exists today, albeit with a new wrinkle.


Look at your kids, and look at you. When interracial dating and marriage were an anomaly in the 70's, they aren't now.  This generation doesn't have the bullshit prejudices that many of us had.  The prerogative of all of us should be to teach our children the basic tenets of our Constitution--that we're all equal and that "the pursuit of happiness"  is a cool thing. 


I see these people ranting about the Islam community center two blocks away from Ground Zero, and I see a people misled by, again, those who would divide us rather than keep us together as Americans. They could put up a Mormon ward or synagogue or a Catholic church there, for all I care.  The point is that they have the freedom to do it.  We can't lose that.  If we do, we've lost our country.


Of course, the movie ended well.  Blacks and whites became friends.  I'm sad that  we've not learned the lessons from 9/11 and turned a page.  Good flick to watch and upon which to reflect.  E Pluribus Unum means "out of many, one."