This weekend, Susan and I saw the outstanding movie ’42′ about the hateful challenges the heroic Jackie Robinson faced as a MLB trailblazer with the Montreal Royals and Brooklyn Dodgers. It reminded me of passages I wrote in my book, ‘What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports‘:

Washington could stand to learn a whole lot from the lessons taught in sports, from the enduring principles found in sports. Because many of the most difficult and most pressing problems that confound even the smartest minds in Washington are the kinds of problems that the sports world typically manages to address much more easily and effectively.

Take, for example, the issue of race. In the wake of Barack Obama’s phenomenal election in 2008, Americans of all political persuasions have rightly celebrated the historic ascendancy of an African-American to the Presidency. I worked for John McCain in the campaign, and was still personally moved watching Barack Obama and his family on the night of the election as he gave his victory speech at Chicago’s Grant Park. All of us who saw that victory speech were watching the inspirational fulfillment and embodiment of the American Dream in the world of politics. The election of an African-American president truly was—and is—an important milestone in our nation’s political history, and we are right to trumpet its significance in the course of human events.

African-Americans ascended to the top of the sports world long before they ascended to the top of the political world. In the 1930s, Jesse Owens became arguably the greatest Olympic sprinter of all time at the Berlin Games (much to Adolf Hitler’s aggravation). In the 1940s, Joe Louis held the world heavyweight boxing crown longer than any boxer before or since. In the 1950s, Jim Brown established himself as arguably the greatest football running back of all time, first for Syracuse University and then for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns. In the 1960s, Bill Russell led the Boston Celtics to the longest-running period of dominance in professional basketball, playing against the likes of Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlin, and other African-American NBA stars. In the 1970s, Atlanta Braves slugger Hank Aaron became the all-time home run king in Major League Baseball. In the 1980s, Michael Jordan began what would become the greatest professional basketball career in history. In the 1990s, Tiger Woods did the same in golf (following in the wake of other “minorities” such as Lee Elder, Lee Trevino, and Chi Chi Rodriguez). And here in the twenty-first century, Venus and Serena Williams have excelled at the game that Richmond’s Arthur Ashe loved, becoming the greatest “sister act” of all time in professional women’s tennis.

The reason I recount this long (yet greatly abbreviated) list of athletic achievement by African-Americans is not, in any way, to diminish Barack Obama’s electoral achievement. It is, instead, to make the point that black athletic achievement played a major role in helping change American attitudes about race. Black athletic achievement helped set in motion many of the positive changes that have taken place in American life. The characteristics of sports paved the way for many of the political milestones we celebrate today.

Indeed, interestingly, the desegregation of American schools occurred after the successful integration of the races in Major League Baseball and other professional sports. The passage of the Voting Rights Act occurred after black athletes had been voted recipients of various All-Star and Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year awards. And the adoption of the Civil Rights Act occurred after numerous black athletes like Jackie Robinson had the opportunity to excel on the playing field with white athletes.

To be sure, sport wasn’t the only cultural influence positively affecting race relations. And the path to racial equality in sports was, at times, anything but smooth.

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The world of sports has greatly helped our nation see the horrible unfairness of racial discrimination. And the sports world has been able to play this leadership role for one vitally instructive reason:

The world of sports is a meritocracy.

The world of sports rewards excellence. It honors genuine achievement. It celebrates greatness. Sports teams do not care about a player’s religion, race, ethnicity, or place of origin. All a team cares about is whether a player can punt, pass, kick, run, tackle, hit, catch, pitch, dribble, shoot, jump, rebound, skate, evade, elude, block, or defend well enough to help the team win.

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To his great credit, Martin Luther King Jr. understood the promise of the American Dream. Rather than deriding our founding fathers, Dr. King actually rooted his appeal for justice and change in the founders’ ideals, saying that it was high time for a nation of free people to fully live up to the lofty principles of those who had once proclaimed that “all men are created equal.”

As Dr. King noted, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

For Deacon Jones and Jackie Robinson and numerous other black athletes, that “promissory note” guaranteed equal opportunity—not equal outcomes. A level playing field means everyone can claim the rewards of their hard work and success; it means that people can’t legitimately claim they were wronged if they don’t succeed; it encourages hard work and responsibility and the competitive spirit athletes need to overcome adversity, and it helps prevent us from becoming a nation of bellyachers, whiners, and sore losers.