Race

If you look up the word “race,” you will find quite a few entries which can broadly be grouped into two:

• ·       a contest of speed
• ·       a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics

These two meanings made it the perfect title for a film about Jesse Owens, winner of four gold medals in track in the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin.

Jesse Owens, born in 1913, was a young man whose amazing talent became apparent by the time he was in high school. The movie begins as he leaves his boyhood home for Ohio State University, where he joins the track team. The movie makes no attempt to soften the rampant racism with which he is confronted every day in everything he does. Even after winning those four gold medals, he continued to be shamefully treated by many whites, remained prohibited from sharing common spaces with white students, and was never invited to the White House to receive honors along with his fellow Olympic medalists.      

While limiting the movie to that relatively short period of his life before and just after the 1936 Olympics (Jesse Owens died in 1980), the filmgoer does not learn anything about what happened on his return to the United States. Although very well-known and cheered when he earned those four gold medals, once he returned he was just another African American, subject to all the same discrimination that had long been a part of this country, and, listening to some of our current politicians, appears to continue to this day.

After the games, he was barred from participating in further amateur sports competition, and was not much welcome in the professional sports world. By the end of 1936 he was racing against horses in Havana just to make some money. Rather than crowds of 100,000 in Munich, he was lucky to appear before 3000.

Watching this movie gives much pause. Part of the story involves the many Americans who did not believe our country should have participated in the 1936 Olympics in Germany. There was never a complete consensus but majority opinion supported participation and most athletes here and around the world did participate, with small numbers of Jewish athletes remaining at home. The movie makes clear that leaders of the Black community here in the United States tried to convince Mr. Owens to stay at home, and that he was really torn by the decision. Of course it is easy to admire his decision in retrospect because, from the viewpoint of the Nazis, he did the worst possible thing: he prevailed against the Germans. It would have been a much darker story had he not run so well.

I cannot help but wonder how I would have acted had I been a young adult in the late 1930s. Even in the 1950s and 60s I remained in a Caucasian cocoon. It was not until going to college in the early 1970s that I thought about people of other races. But just because more people of color were being admitted to schools that had been predominantly white did not mean that there was any meaningful interaction between the students. I remember at the time I was confused and disappointed that the Black students on campus tended to keep largely to themselves. Seventy years was not long enough to erase the negativity stemming from the years of slavery. Here we are at well over one hundred years since slavery was abolished and still wrestling with the fallout.

Although this movie did not get very high scores on Rotten Tomatoes, I still recommend it, because I think it was well done and, from what I have read, fairly accurate. If I have gotten either the details or the message wrong, please do not hesitate to share your thoughts.

Love,

Rebecca