People who break barriers carry added burden

My mother was born in 1932. Had she been born 30 years later, I think she would have been an Episcopal priest. But, when my mom came of age, women just didn't do that ... yet.

So, instead, she became Arizona's first woman television news anchor. It just happened she walked out of broadcast school about the time network affiliates were feeling the pressure to hire a greater diversity of gender and ethnic faces on your local television news.

She tells lots of stories of the grumblings and glares of disgruntled male newscasters and journalists. But, like it or not, the first person to pass through the rubble of a newly demolished wall has particular burdens, duties and responsibilities. They become symbols. And they have little or no say in that matter. Perhaps not fair, but it is a fact.

My mother was doomed never to be a television newscaster. Instead, she would always be the television newscaster with XX chromosomes. The female newscaster. The one with the foundation garments.

This same thing happened when I entered seminary in 1979. By then, nearly 30 percent of the student body was female. Finally, seminaries of mainstream Protestant churches welcomed women, even recruited them. But these women faced challenges when they landed jobs in Everyday American congregations. They were never going to be pastors; rather, lady-pastors, like in the sentence, "Hey, they've got a Lady-Pastor!"

When you break down a long-standing, long-venerated wall, the first ones through the gap accept the burden of being a symbol.

Nineteen eighty-eight. Super Bowl XXII. Denver Broncos, losers of Super Bowl XXI the year before, faced the Washington Redskins, led by black quarterback Doug Williams, who had been called to duty when starting white quarterback Jay Schroeder had been felled by injury.

Have I mentioned Doug was black? That is, not white? See, there had never been a black Super Bowl quarterback before.

So, for two weeks, Doug Williams fielded stupid question after even more stupid question about being a black quarterback. A Snopes.com writer says this: "To his credit, Williams handled the interrogation with aplomb, providing full, thoughtful answers to every question put to him, never snapping at reporters whose queries bordered on the ridiculous, and never expressing impatience or irritation with journalists who asked him the same questions over and over."

Amazing test of character, really. Because Doug Williams could not be allowed to be a quarterback. He was obliged to be a black quarterback. He was a symbol. And he had no say in the matter. So, he answered every last moronic question, then stepped on the field and threw a Super Bowl record four touchdown passes in the second quarter, won the MVP, and rolled the Denver Broncos 42-10.

OK, going out on a limb here, but here's what's not going through the minds of those Denver Broncos football players: "Wow, that black quarterback is behaving a lot like a magnificently talented professional football player who's kicking our ass!"

I'm saying nobody on the field was real focused on Doug's blackness.

Two days before this past presidential election, I was standing at the official Obama headquarters -- for professional reasons, not political. As I waited in the front room, I looked at the wall of stickers and posters. This poster caught my eye: "Latinos for Obama."

I just don't get it. I don't believe all Latinos think alike. Neither do I think being Latino adds or subtracts particular credibility to presidential votes. So what does the poster mean? I smiled inwardly, imagining a poster that says "6-foot, 1-inch Blue-eyed Saxon-Welsh Guys For Obama."

Later that night, I was in Henderson as the McCain/Palin rally adjourned. Sure enough, there was a poster: "Latinos for McCain."

I say all that, of course, to say this: It will be interesting to see if and how Barack Obama (our first black president) might gracefully demur under the weight of his obligation to be black; that is, to be a symbol. How he might scratch and claw out from under this baneful duty and be a president. Our president.

I find myself celebrating the occasion of our nation's first black president, and feeling kinda silly and embarrassed that I even notice. I keep thinking of a Bill Bottrell line from the Michael Jackson song "Black or White" (from "Dangerous," the last CD Michael recorded before disappearing more or less permanently into la-la land): "I'm not gonna spend my life being a color."

I was at the Boulevard Mall last Sunday. There's this store called Shiekh. In the window is this T-shirt: "My president is black."

(Sigh.)

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.