America is Better and Harder
Crow’s Feet prompt #29: Major societal changes
The most famous athlete in America today may be Caitlin Clark, who plays basketball for the University of Iowa.
Two days ago, she made the front page of the Washington Post. You can read the article here.
When I graduated high school in 1967, my female classmates had no organized sports teams.
I don’t recall ever thinking there was anything wrong with that.
It’s incredible what we didn’t see then that seems so obvious now.
I was born in 1949.
That America was a different country than the one I live in today.
Jackie Robinson became America's most famous athlete two years before my birth.
Last year, Aliyah Boston, the 2022 Naismith women’s college basketball player of the year, led South Carolina’s team to the national championship, fifty years after the first African American was admitted to the University of South Carolina.
Clark’s Iowa and Boston’s South Carolina meet in a semifinal game tonight, with the winner advancing to the national championship game.
You can read here an article that compares these two phenomenal American athletes.
I grew up with the phrase America was the land of opportunity.
It was not a lie for me, a male, white, middle-class kid.
But it was for the Caitlin Clarks & Aliyah Bostons of mine and previous generations.
For this story, I’ve focused on one corner of American athletics.
The images of those included tell a story of how America has become better.
Truer to its ideals.
A story of progress.
Pick any facet of American society and conjure the images of those now on the inside.
Those images tell a similar story.
But nothing good comes without a cost.
When new people show up, they make new demands.
The best statement about this phenomenon comes from Jennifer Richeson, a Yale psychologist.
My lab is in an old engineering building and there’s exactly one women’s bathroom. No one noticed. And then slowly, Yale began adding women to the department, and they noticed it. They complained. Now there was friction. What had gone unnoticed by those in power in one era was unacceptable to those gaining power in another. When new people show up, they notice things and begin making demands.
The United States Women’s National Soccer Team has just won a demand for equal pay. You can read about it here.
Alex Morgan, a captain on the 2015 & 2019 Women’s World Cup championship teams, said this about the settlement.
What we set out to do was to have acknowlegement of discrimination from U.S. Soccer and we received that through back pay in the settlement. We set out to have fair and equal treatment in working conditions, and we got that…And we set out to have equal pay moving forward for us and the men’s team through U.S. Soccer, and we achieved that.
But it took years.
America was easy to run when only white males were in charge.
No one with power ever gives it up without a struggle.
New voices with power make everything so much more complicated.
England’s George III would sympathize.
Thanks to Robin James for another excellent prompt.
Pat Romito LaPointe provides an interesting personal perspective.
