I love multiculturalism
Watching the Olympics, the Japanese and Italian Brazilians in the men’s Park Skate, and the Aussie Japanese fourteen-year-old gold medal winner for Park Skate…these kids are the future. The winners and other placeholders celebrate as if they have all won across the national divide. They seem to be a single team.
Mixed race, bringing the world together.
I love watching the people in the UK rise up against the hate. Refugees are welcome here, they shout, against decades of fear-mongering by the disgusting political class.
I love the quote that says it is not the people arriving in boats we have to fear, but the people flying in on private jets.
I love the breakdown of binaries. The morphing of gender into a thousand fractals of colour, ability and humanity. Isn’t humanity glorious?
Of course it will make for some changes.
But rather than start with fear, let us start with love.
Do I fear a trans person in the bathroom? It is not their identity that I fear. It is the moral, ethical and integrous being of the person, no matter how they identify, that I may or may not fear. Are they a predator, no matter from what spectrum they live on the gender scale? I would fear putting a 78-year-old male rapist and pedophile who also happens to be running for US president in a room alone with my teenage daughter far more than I would fear a trans person alone with my daughter.
And as to the extremely hollow argument about sport, almost every elite multi-medial winning athlete has some genetic advantage. A whole host of sports are way outside my league based on my height. Isn’t that why we love sport so much? We marvel at the exceptional and different. Their gifts inspire us.
To dismiss an athlete for being different – larger, stronger, smaller, faster, bigger feet, bigger lung capacity – means we would have to go back to the drawing board on all sports.
If the cry is for a levelling of the playing field, then are you only talking about the gender-fluid playing field? What about the other fields, like privilege, wealth and access? Rich countries get to develop more athletes. Poorer countries fight for scraps. Their athletes have to overcome insurmountable odds, even before they are then thrown into the white privilege garbage bin for being too different. Is the financial and economic playing field also significant and worth championing?
I watch the young skate park athletes and their glorious innocence and commitment to each other. They give me hope for a future that includes everyone who shows up allowing everyone else to show up as well, even if they do not look like you.
Photo Taken June 28th 2024
