ESPN recently aired "Black Magic."

Produced by Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, a former star of the National Basketball Association, it tells the story of black basketball players before they were fully accepted on the white college and professional basketball courts.

The grainy films and memories of old athletes shock us into recognizing the cruelty of the system that prevented the best athletes from playing with and against each other. Blacks played against blacks, whites against whites for a long time because, well, that's the way it was.

As you watch, you wonder what the white teams were afraid of. What horrible thing did they think would happen if they played against a black team (well, they might lose the game) or had black players on their team? Why, when they saw a player like the great Oscar Robertson, didn't they say, "If my belief system keeps him off my team, there's something wrong with my beliefs."

"Black Magic" chronicles people who questioned that racist system and the battles they fought to have the best play against the best, regardless of color.

Progress is made by people asking questions. Before composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson probably asked one of his colleagues, "What if we send King George a letter telling him we're not England's colony anymore? What do you think of that idea?"

Maybe every revolution begins with a question.

"Question Gender" was the suggestion I read recently on a T-shirt worn by a college student.

"What does that mean?" I asked her.

"What attributes, what social norms are attached to gender? Is gender really only binary, only male and female?" she said.

The student said that students sometimes ask her about the shirt and transgender issues, "but it's always a comfortable situation. They're just curious, wondering."

She had attended the "Translating Identity Conference" at the University of Vermont. Researching it brought me to a world I didn't know much about. One of the speakers there was Kate Bornstein, the author of "Gender Outlaw -- On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us." The book is described as Bornstein's "disarming account of her life and genders."

Forty years ago, the civil rights movement impacted every corner of America, and those racial barriers we see on the basketball courts in "Black Magic" began to fall away. Now African-Americans dominate the game.

But the "Translating Identity Conference" and the student's T-shirt signal that other, and very large, changes have also occurred.

They've occurred because some people have the courage to ask questions.