OPINIONS

Opinions 15 Loyola-Chicago Helped Desegregate Basketball

Paul Collier Red & Black Editor

In the past couple years, LoyolaChicago’s men’s basketball team has captured the attention of the sports world through their appearances in March Madness. In 2018, they tied the record for the lowest seed to make a final four, and they lost in the sweet sixteen last Saturday after upsetting the one seed Illinois. Loyola’s team chaplain, Sister Jean, who was 98 years old in their first run in 2018 also gained national attention for her support of the Ramblers.

But this is not the first time this program has seen success, and the last time they were this popular on the national stage, their success was integral to diversity in basketball.

Prior to the 1962-1963 basketball season, there was a “gentleman’s agreement” that no team would play more than three Black players at one time, as a part of upholding white superiority and disparaging integration in the sport. Other teams even had to follow state rules that banned all-white teams from playing against integrated schools, such as Mississippi State, who, according to state court orders, were forbidden from playing any team with a Black player.

However, Loyola coach, George Ireland, defied this agreement by not only starting four Black players, but by having his first substitute be a Black player, meaning he often played with an all-Black lineup. Loyola was also a top 10 team the entire season, setting them up for the NCAA tournament. Likewise, Mississippi State was a top 10 team that Coach Ireland considered to possibly be the best in the country.

However, many segregationists, including Miss. Governor Ross Barnett, wanted to keep sports from becoming segregated, which led to Mississippi State turning down tournament bids in the years prior. Supported by University President D.W. Colvard, the state college board decided in an 8-3 decision to allow Mississippi State to play, a decision upheld by the state supreme court only a day before the team was set to leave for the tournament.

Mississippi State still snuck their starters out of the state to avoid lawyers or protestors.

As fate would have it, the radically integrated Loyola-Chicago team would meet the all-white Mississippi State in the sweet sixteen game known as the “Game of Change,” where Loyola would win by ten on their way to their first, and only, national championship.

This cemented a legacy of diversity and integration in college basketball, immortalized in 2013 when Loyola’s 1962-1963 team became the only team inducted into the national collegiate hall of fame.

In fact, Mississippi State would allow its first Black student in 1965. In 1966, Texas Western and its five Black starters defeated the allwhite Kentucky team in the NCAA Championship game, now cemented in the movie “Glory Road.” The SEC allowed its first Black player in 1967.

This makes Loyola-Chicago a major institution for the progress of desegretgation and black equality in American society and culture. In a sport dominated by historicallywhite schools, its promising to see a trailblazing program find success.

Courtesy Wikiwand

Netflix’s ‘Moxie’ Fails at Valuable Inclusion

Akansha Das Red & Black Staff

Amy Poehler directs and stars in one of Netflix’s newest films, “Moxie,” a story of the shy, introverted Vivian (Hadley Robinson) who becomes motivated to fight the sexism in her school after learning of her mom’s rebellious and feminist past. Given the timing of the film’s release, the diverse cast and talent of Poehler herself, the film set high expectations for itself that it ultimately did not deliver on.

Starting with the positive, “Moxie” most definitely highlights the various microaggressions women and girls face in school that can really damage their self-esteem at an already sensitive age. From double standards on dress code violations to having a class “list” ranking girls on various physical features to many of the girls being told they have “big emotions” and “shouldn’t get too riled up” when they try to report any of these demeaning incidents, “Moxie” certainly addresses the most problematic aspects of the “traditional high school experience.”

The film also highlights the various ways that men interact with feminism movements, from the “hypermasculine-jerk/jock” archetype who often perpetuate traditional gender norms and gender inequality to men like Vivian’s love interest, Seth, who fully supports the Moxie clan (the main protagonists fighting their school’s sexism) in their walkouts and their advocacy to have a female nominee for a sports scholarship. The display of a bystander male teacher who isn’t quite sure how to respond to the girls breaking the dress code and wearing tank-tops was as comedic as it was important in highlighting the neutrality many men try to take in feminist movements when not knowing quite what the “right” thing to say is rather than taking time to educate themselves on the ways they benefit from male privilege and how gender inequality can hinder their own initiatives.

Yet, I am conflicted on the film’s handling of intersectionality. Complaints of Black women like Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Peña), who complains about girls merely being judged for their hair and “asses,” are not given any more thought or depth. The film also touches on the challenges of Asian women in handling the conservative natures of their families that adhere to more traditional gender norms and the feminist preachings of the often White women around them – as seen with Vivian’s interactions with her best friend Claudia (Lauren Tsai).

But as Petrana Radulovic says in her “Moxie” review, sometimes the film feels like a “checklist” of wokeness and inclusion. Yes, the film does include women of color, women romantically attracted to other women, a single mother and a woman in a wheelchair – but does it give their storylines equal importance as Vivian’s? Not really. Many storylines about women of color are merely portrayed in the context of Vivian’s reaction to them.

There are also many unanswered storylines. At a party, two of the girls of the Moxie clan kiss, paving the way to a potentially impactful storyline of two lesbian women, but the interaction is ultimately never addressed. Similarly, during an emotional breakdown Vivian is distraught over her dad not talking to her anymore only to never have this plot addressed again. Even as Emma (Josephine Langford) comes forward and accuses Mitchell of sexual assault in front of the school, the trauma of her experience is not fully addressed as the film here delves into a celebration of mainstream feminism a couple minutes later. All in all, “Moxie” is an optimistic, tightly packaged coming-of-age PG-13 movie that ultimately doesn’t delve into intersectional feminism and emotions surrounding sexual assault and family detachment it had potential to do.

Courtesy Wikipedia