The United States IS the Land of Opportunity!
The audience erupted in spontaneous applause. I cried.
I started crying before the movie officially ended but when the applause began my tears turned from a silent, polite flow to an audible stream of elephant tears as my body shook with emotions that I am still unsure if I can name….Gratitude? Sadness? Pain?…..Awe?……
Humility! I am awestruck by the humility the real women behind the move “Hidden Figures” displayed in the face of constant barriers. These women represent the millions of silent heroes who will never grace the pages of a history book or the sliverscreen but their stories will resonate in the spirit of those who follow because someone always knows the Truth….even if I don’t.
When I first read of this movie I was dumbfounded insofar as I have always gravitated to what is labeled “revisionist history” especially as it relates to women and people of color and, yet, I had never heard of these women. The vestige of my brain which embraces “conspiracy” theory, spent a few seconds considering that this piece of history had been purposely kept from us.
When I taught high school US history in the early 1990s, we spent six weeks exploring the Civil Rights movement and I took pride in knowing that I had exposed these students to truths that the mainstream culture had not yet embraced. I focused on the stories of women, blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Hispanohablantes, gays and lesbians, the marginalized, the rejected, the socially unacceptable, the people who added their unique skills and intellect to advance an area of society such that ALL benefit…..even if no one noticed.
But isn’t this the reality of all that is True and Great, all that is Real and Eternal. The story is usually only known by a few and yet the Truth of its lessons and learnings will endure the test of time for a time when more people will be able to comprehend, understand, and embrace the Truth.
In the end I cried because I felt vindicated. I have spent my whole life yearning for a world that accepts women at the highest levels of society, really smart women, and does not see these geniuses as a threat but rather embraces them for the skills and talents they offer rather than exalt as criteria the façade of the exterior and thereby relegate our role to that of “cheerleader.”
I fought against the consistent exhortations to be a cheerleader and chose rather to be president of my class. In my microcosm of life, I fought the attitudes I encountered in first grade when I wanted to run for class president but was told, “Girls cannot be president. They are secretaries.” However, by high school I was the president of my class all four years amidst the ever present “sexism” ignorantly veiled in support as they extolled my exterior beauty with statements like, “You are so pretty. You should be a cheerleader.” While I appreciated the generally held belief that I was nice looking, I wanted my value to be about my intellect and, more importantly, I wanted the highest value of women to be what God gifted us to be rather than the very narrow and limited role assigned by the current culture.
So I cried. I cried because I had no idea that we have such a society. We already live in a space and place and time that accepts people for the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, the shape of their body, their exterior. I am not blind to institutional barriers that remain. I am not blind to attitudes that see difference as “less than.” My eyes have simply been further opened to the Truth that you really can be anything you want.
For all the paternalism, for all the remnants of institutional misogyny, the United States is a place that offers opportunity for all.