Confront or Compromise? What Would You Do?

838 words | 3 mins 21 secs read time

In the hubbub of daily life —parenting life, married life, career life, and what-in-the-world-is-going-on-with-my-life—I fell behind. This week, however, I found my way back to Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast, binging the entire season on the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As I listened, questions about power kept rolling around in my head.

When we think of power, we often imagine it as something absolute. You either have it or you don't. But the story of Jesse Owens, the legendary African American athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, reveals a much more nuanced reality when power intersects with marginalized identities.

As a black man in Jim Crow-era America, Owens faced systemic oppression and limited opportunities. Yet his athletic abilities granted him a unique form of power; the ability to become an American hero by challenging Nazi propaganda at the Olympics games.

Or at least, that is the story we're told.  

The truth of the 1936 games is much more co…