The American government and National Football League are experiencing boundary breaking changes. The Democratic Party’s two leading candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represent a tremendous evolution taking place in American culture. Though John Edwards is a candidate, he is not considered a front-runner to win the Democratic presidential nomination. With Clinton and Obama considered the two most likely to win the nomination, one of America’s two major political parties will promote a candidate that is not a white male. The presence of both candidates crosses gender and racial boundaries.
Nearly 90 years after women gained the vote in America, a female candidate for the first time has a legitimate chance of becoming president of the United States. At the same time, in other strata of social life, women are competing on levels previously unimaginable. Female firsts have jumped into the ranks of Indy Car racing, and of course, the United States Congress, with Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female Speaker of the House.
We are able to see the gender boundaries breaking even here at UT. Athletic scholarships have given women the ability to compete on a nationwide level, and the results have been particularly bright at UT with women’s soccer reaching the final four and the volleyball team’s national championship!
Without even mentioning the inspiring hope of Obama, racial boundaries are being broached as rapidly as their gender counterparts. When the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts earned the right to play in the 2007 Super Bowl, Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy became the first African-American coaches to reach the NFL’s title game. That one African-American coach reached the Super Bowl is spectacular and unprecedented, but two in one year shows the strides that the NFL is making to have their coaches better represent the makeup of the players and the population as a whole. The NFL’s achievement comes a year after the National Basketball Association featured a second-year coach Avery Johnson in the NBA Finals, following in a line that began in 1966 with Bill Russell coaching the Boston Celtics. Not to mention, Major League Baseball has a long history of successful minority managers.
Two significant aspects of American society, the government and the sports industry, are undergoing a historic evolution to open new doors for minorities and females as leaders of America. Soon to be absent are the days when the fundamental requirement for a leadership position was being a white male.