<a href="mailto:jmcgovern@pressrepublican.com">By JERRY McGOVERN</a>
School Ties
April 27, 2008 04:59 am
—
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.
Many of us grew up in the "binary" world that student questions. We didn't question it -- it was just part of the landscape, the wallpaper of our lives. For us, there were males and females, and we knew pretty well how each should act, what clothing they should wear and what jobs they should pursue.
We didn't talk about "sexual orientation" or "transgender" because those ideas hadn't entered our brains.
But the world we assumed was fixed was, in fact, moving. And the gender roles we took for granted, even the genders themselves, were evolving.
Cultural historians can probably point to milestones in America's progress toward a society freer of gender stereotypes, but they're not as obvious as the steps along the civil rights march. And there's no transcendent national figure in the movement, as the Rev. Martin Luther King was for those battling for civil rights in the '60s.
And yet, kids like the college student who wore the gender T-shirt are not afraid to ask questions about our culture. Somehow, we've come to a new place, where people have more control over how they will define themselves. Male or female or some combination is just a part of the mosaic that is the person.
Some of us are probably horrified that questions about gender are being asked -- we believe there are no questions and, anyway, we already have the answers. Like those old coaches who worried about African-American basketball players, some of us try to hang on.
But it's good news that college students ask questions that never occurred to many of our younger selves. Education is about asking questions as much as it is about getting answers.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.