Did anybody else notice that the music played after Barack Obama's speech last night was the score from the 2000 movie Remember the Titans?
The movie is the true story of Alexandria, Virginia's T.C. Williams High School, which had a perfect football season in 1971, the first year of desegregation. In the movie, Denzil Washington plays Herman Boone, the black coach who replaces a popular and entrenched white coach, Bill Yoast (played by Will Patton).
Ultimately, a good number of the white townspeople, most of the players, and even Yoast accept Boone, but not before a lot of nasty racial incidents and soul-searching moments.
The concluding line from the movie:
"People say that it can’t work…black and white….here we make it work every day. We have our disagreements, of course, but before we reach for hate....always...always...we remember the Titans."Does America have too much racial animus (and its cosmetically-covered sister, "mistrust") to accept Barack Obama as its Herman Boone?
As I see polling showing an increasing number of people who say race is a deciding factor in who they'll vote for, I sadly start to think the answer is yes. This isn't because there are so many white people in this country who are not ready for a black president. It's because there are just enough of them.
If we learned anything from Ralph Nader, it's the damage that taking away even 3.7% of the American public can do to a political candidate's chances in a close election.
