Wilma Rudolph vs. Che Guevara

Equality is a nebulous concept for many.

For some, the primary importance of equality is essence. Every human being is born with innate capacities, natural rights ("natural" speaking to "by birth"), and initial opportunity to realize those capacities.

For others, equality is a matter of results, in which human beings not only enjoy great access but similar outcomes. Disparities in skill and wealth, as well

Wilma Rudolph -- three-time gold medal winning runner, promoted the equality of essence in conjunction with individual human potential:

“Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.”

She emphasized the extensive power of the individual to near deification, proclaiming:

“I believe in me more than anything in this world.”

In one teacher's classroom, I noticed the first quote for Rudolph's prominently displayed, followed by a picture of Communist Revolutionary Che Guevara.

Here are Guevara's thoughts on the human spirit:

"Youth should learn to think and act as a mass.”

Also, Guevara wanted "to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!"

To Guevara, the individual was nothing, the state was everything, the same ideology the motivated the Nazis and the Soviet Communists, or which Guevara was a fawning adherent.

Regarding his respect for humanity, besides himself, Guevara said the following:

"To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!"

"A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!"

Guevara's dream was unending Revolution, and he did not care who got in his way. Either you favored his totalitarian tyranny, or you would be swept away like dust.

About religion, he deified himself, to the point where he would even mow down the Son of man:

"I am not Christ or a philanthropist. I am all the contrary of a Christ … I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don’t get nailed to a cross or any other place."

This is Rudolph's "I believe in myself" humanism pushed to an obscene extreme.
Unlike Ms. Rudolph, Guevara's convictions excluded recognition of other beliefs, convinced that to realize his own dreams required the demise of opponents:

"What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims."

Liberation, yet at the cost of millions? That is not liberty. In pursuing his own dreams, Che Guevara would utterly destroy them, for there is no liberty without respect for the essential dignity of mankind.

No two icons of human ingenuity could be more incongruous than Wilma Rudolph, an accomplished athlete who achieved through her own merits, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who wanted to impose Soviet-Style forced-equality -- read, Communism -- by dismissing millions or cramming them into his warped ideology.

If their worldviews are so incompatible, how does one justify presenting the mottoes of the athlete and the blood-thirsty warlord on the same wall in a classroom?

This schizophrenic adherence is the cause of much frustration among young people, especially minorities, who want to realize who they are, yet at the same time want to be respected as members of a repressed cohort. One cannot be both free and slave, not can one pursue one's dreams while compromising the pursuit of others'.