Focusing on Unity

As the editor for Liberty Sports Magazine, I receive regular emails from various news and press organizations with upcoming news and events. Since our magazine is pretty specific to the world of triathlon, and the various swim, bike, run components, much of the news I get cannot be used.

I received an interesting one today about a program whose mission was stated as follows: “Campaign celebrates unsung heroes among Philadelphia’s black men and boys.  Knight Foundation and Open Society Foundations’ Campaign for Black Male Achievement launch campaigns to amplify black men’s and boys’ positive community impact…”

The program had nothing to do with triathlon and I politely responded to the sender explaining that. However the more I read the release, the more I felt like we were taking a step backwards in society. So I added a little additional commentary to my response that I will share with you. It was another situation where I could have and probably should have kept my opinion to myself but … it WAS Monday morning so ….

Hi Marc,

Thanks for your email. Our publication is entirely in the multisport genre focusing on swimming, biking, running, and triathlon. While I appreciate the work being done here, I don’t think I can find the tie in to our magazine.

As a personal and side editor’s note from me, the sport of triathlon thrives itself to be all inclusive, accepting, and we tend to not see our athletes in color. Rather we see them as one; a unified band of athletes rich in camaraderie who support one another whether they are green, alien, male, female, etc. Our hope is that the rest of the universe is slowly finding their way to this same way of thinking and acceptance. I would never want to create additional barriers by highlighting a black/white/male/non male type of a program.

I want to see more promotion of “people” helping people and being roles models for other “people”. Not people of color or gender… just people. We should be providing positive role models for everyone, regardless of their race, gender, economic backgrounds, or other restrictive or limiting group classifications. We are all in this together, and so should be our solution.

Our youth today need to understand that while we live on a plane of living and abundant color, the reality is we need to all exist in a world that is gray…. seeing each other as all being the same. The success of our future will be determined by how quickly and universally the collective WE accept that blended color for all mankind and stop trying to categorize.

The message that these kids need to take away is that THEY CAN ACHIEVE. But that role model can be anyone of any color living anywhere.

As an example, we work closely with many groups who run sports programs for inner city kids in repressed economic areas, and we will never refer to that as a “black” or “African American” thing or program. That reinforces the very barriers we should be trying to break down.

I could go on, but I think you get my point.

Feel free to submit any future releases relating to triathlon.

We’ll all just people Marc.

Regards,

Steve Brown
Contributing Editor – Liberty Sports Magazine

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