COMMENTARY: The Olympics and a Rainbow of Races

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) NAPLES, Italy_ My sense of time, never quite certain while traveling in Europe, is thoroughly confused as I tune in the Olympic Games and watch events that took place when […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

NAPLES, Italy_ My sense of time, never quite certain while traveling in Europe, is thoroughly confused as I tune in the Olympic Games and watch events that took place when today was tomorrow in Australia.


The commentary is in Italian, so all I can do is watch. But tonight watching is enough.

I see a multiracial team from South Africa, whose apartheid regime once sent only whites to the Olympics and, for a time, was banished. European nations whose public face once was pale are represented tonight by men and women of all colors.

I see North and South Korean athletes marching under one banner called “Korea” and lifting joined hands aloft. Muslim athletes from Iran and Iraq are followed by Jews from Israel. A woman in a wheelchair parades with the lithe and bounding.

When I see a dark-skinned Australian swimmer light the Olympic flame, I recall that this Olympics is Australia’s time to move beyond its shameful treatment of native peoples. Perhaps the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City will invite a Native American to light the flame.

Having once planned intricate processions as a pastor, I know these visuals have been tightly scripted. But, still, there is no mistaking the rainbow of race on these teams and the putting aside of national politics. National rivalries remain, of course, for the Olympics continues to be organized along national lines. But the political tensions seem distant. Italian flags wave happily as the powerful Italian women’s volleyball team dominates Korea, then Peru, but without the glaring, hostile pride of earlier Games.

Does any of this reflect larger realities in the world outside Sydney? Probably not to the extent we would like, for genocide still reigns in some lands, tensions are high back home in Peru, and jingoistic politicians can always stir applause by waving an angry flag or appealing to bigotry. But I sense that much of the world is seeing _ and celebrating _ its profound diversity.

Earlier today, I caught a close-up glimpse of this willingness to celebrate diversity.

I left a meeting at the U.S. Navy base here in time to see the “frocking of chiefs,” that event where enlisted men and women are advanced to the rank of Chief Petty Officer and start wearing khaki, rather than blue.


Waiting to be piped down a double line of comrades were a rainbow of new chiefs: male and female, black and white. The ceremony dates back 100 years, to a time when the Navy didn’t look like this.

Behind the dignitaries stood three flags: American in the center, Italian to one side, Naval to the other. A strong breeze sailed through the courtyard. The Italian flag was the first to tip over. A white female chief moved immediately to set the flag back in its stand. A black enlisted man stepped forward to hold it in place.

The American flag fell next. A white male chief stepped forward.

Soon, three chiefs in khaki designated themselves flag-supporters: a black female, an Asian male and an Hispanic male.

I know that race still matters in America, gender still matters and sometimes the melting pot bubbles uncomfortably. But on this day, as people of all sorts took part, I thought: we are learning, we are moving on.

What was once only a noble ideal is becoming more and more a fact: people don’t have to think one way, look one way, act one way, or believe one way.

While the Olympic Games are to some extent a scripted festival, at least the script has good intentions, namely, all belong. Maybe, at least in the scripting room, this fragmented world is learning something.


When Jesus said that true life would come only to those who are willing to lose their lives for the sake of the Gospel, I think he pointed to scenes such as these. He was concerned at the moment with Jew and Gentile becoming one, male and female becoming one, sinner and saint becoming one.

If those gaps could be bridged, then why not others? Why not dark-skinned and light-skinned? Why not rich and poor? Why not Christian and non-Christian? Why not all of us?

DEAEND EHRICH

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