“Remember the Titans,” defines being an outsider as someone who is of a different race, who is thrown into a situation and is thus forced to find meaningful ways to deal with the problem. The movie introduces the audience into this dilemma from the very beginning of the story when the south does away with segregated schools in order to promote racial harmony. The problem is that while things look good on paper the reality of the situation is usually very different from the expected outcomes.
We see what can happen to a football team, a school, and an entire town when government tries to force a solution upon the populace. While I certainly agree that desegregation was valuable to the conscience of America, the people involved certainly had to deal with a myriad of problems.
The movie focuses on how a football team is forced to deal with not only the addition of several African Americans to the team. The existing players are filled with the emotions of having to deal with this. Many are afraid of losing their spot on the team, but many are reacting to the hate going on in the streets at the idea of having blacks in the community.
The coaches, on the inside, especially Coach Yoast views this all from the perspective of what is going to happen to his team as a result of the addition of new players. He looks on the team as his, he built it, he has coached it his way, and he is not going to let new players and the addition of a new coach have any effect on what he has planned for them.
Being an outsider, Coach Boone deals with the situation at hand by promoting unity, as he had done in the past among the players. He uses several techniques to accomplish this. First, he forces the athletes to share rooms with those of a different race in order for them to learn about each other. Second, he makes the team learn as much as they can about each other by telling them that if they are not able to answer specific questions about one another, then they will have three-a-day practices. Third, he uses the traditional camaraderie of the game of football to allow each member of the team to learn to rely on each other. Since Coach Boone has been an outsider all of his life, due to race relations at that time, he knew what his players were going through and did all that he could to make them comfortable. I also think because of the kind of the person he was, that he also felt what the insiders were afraid of, and he hoped that his strategies would work in addressing thier concerns as well..
While these strategies worked for the most part, there were still those unwilling to accept the newcomers. Coach Yoast faced situations where he was forced to choose between accepting the outsiders as part of the team, or working against them in order to further his own career. He ultimately made what was the best decision for his team, leaving out his own career objectives, which shows that he has grown though the experience and has come out of it a better man.
Not everyone was as willing as these great men to embrace this new world as a community in which they could all benefit as we see many forces at work within the school, and town, as the people who accepted the outsiders were ostracized from the rest.
The movie moves us along through a powerful series of events until we find ourselves cheering the outcome of how these problems were met and dealt with in constructive and lasting ways. “Remember the Titans,” gives us insight into how we can learn to deal with these problems within our own lives in order to not only help when we see an outsider tying to fit in, but also when we find ourselves in the outsider role.
In my dealings with those in my life, I will take the message of, "Remember the Titans", to find ways to promote unity among the students I work with. Cliques as communities are a very destructive force that causes hurt feelings and confusion. Things can happen in the blink of an eye to change the way these communities see its members. One who was assured of his or her place on the inside suddenly finds themselves on the outside with nowhere to turn. If I can find a way to help these kids see others for who they are, rather than who they pretend to be in order to be a part of a clique, perhaps the feelings of inferiority will lesson, and these kids can start to view themselves as worthwhile.
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