Remember the Titans - Revisited

There was a movie released in 2000 starring Will Patton and the great Denzel Washington, which told a true story about how a high school in Alexandria, VA and its football team dealt with integration in 1971. It is truly one of my favorite movies.

The movie? Remember the Titans.

Coach Herman Boone (Washington) took over the team in 1971, during the peak of the desegregation movement of the schools throughout the South. It was a raucous, and sometimes violent, time in American History.  The coach faced resistance from the man he replaced, Coach Bill Yoast (Patton) and the many parents who still believed in the Jim Crow practice of "separate, but equal". Which it never was.

Coach Boone, as his first public act, made the decision to empty the buses headed for football camp because both the black players and white players loaded up by race. Instead, once the buses were empty, he had them reload by offensive players and defensive players. This was an anathema to the parents who remained to send off their boys.

There were other instances which occurred at camp and Coach Boone used great forethought to get the teammates to learn to get along, not as white players and black players, but as players who called themselves the Titans.

I realize this is a movie and cinematic license is taken to make a true story "truer and better" than the real story.

My point is this: this movie tells the story of a real time and place, and events which truly happened, not only in Alexandria, but in other parts of the South and the rest of the country. It is a historical fact that there was segregation in this country and it was evil. We talk negatively about apartheid in South Africa, but we were no better.

Some people, including me, believed in the message Dr King taught our country right up until he died. I still believe in his message. It is not about the color of our skin, but instead, it is about the content of our character. It is not a black issue or white issue. It is a people issue.

Let's bring it down to the basics. I am no better or different than say, Al Sharpton, except that his character is flawed by the measure of all decent people. Why can I say this?

I can say it because I look at the soul of my white neighbor, my black neighbor, my Hispanic neighbor and my Asian neighbor, and I see decent people who treat me with the same respect and decency as I treat them. I don't judge people by their skin color, or race, or heredity. I judge their character, not only towards me, but also towards others.

Sharpton, Louis Farrakkhan, and David Duke all judge by the surface they see, the skin color, and not the character of the person they are looking at. These men are pure, hateful racists, who cannot see beyond their hate. Just like Hitler couldn't.

I did not know of Coach Boone before 2000. But I can tell you that I know of him and Coach Yoast now. These men exemplify how we all need to learn to adapt, find the way to look past the surface of the person standing next to us. We are not white Americans or black Americans. We are Americans. That's all. No hyphen. No delineation. No adjective. Just Americans. And we need a Coach Boone and a Coach Yoast, or a Dr King, to remind us of that.

I will never forget the lesson of Dr King or of this movie, and instead, I will always Remember the Titans.