Sen. Kyrsten Sinema knows a thing or two about crusading for justice. As an activist back in the early 2000s, she protested the Iraq War in a pink tutu. And as a first-term Arizona state legislator, she routinely delivered scathing speeches against her Republican opponents, marching back to her office filled with righteous indignation – only to see the GOP’s bills pass. 

Now, after transforming herself into a pragmatic coalition-builder willing to work with conservative allies, she’s on the receiving end of that indignation. 

Using the same approach that helped her become the first Democrat from Arizona elected to the U.S. Senate in 30 years, Ms. Sinema has co-spearheaded a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that would deliver badly needed improvements to America’s roads, bridges, water systems, broadband internet, and more – and prove that the American model of governance is still viable. 

“This bill fixes our democracy as much as it fixes our roads and bridges,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski, a New Jersey Democrat and member of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, which helped develop some of the underlying ideas in the bill and held a bipartisan press conference Friday with five of the senators involved to urge its passage in both chambers. “To my fellow Democrats, I would say – let’s seize this opportunity.”

But at a time when Democrats control the House, Senate, and White House, some see bipartisanship as an unnecessary capitulation on their grand agenda. The Arizona realities that pushed Ms. Sinema to reach out to Republicans stand in contrast with the current alignment of power in Washington – one that liberal Democrats are keen to capitalize on, including by passing their “human infrastructure” priorities, with investments in child care and mitigating climate change.

With the support of President Joe Biden, who campaigned on promises of working across the aisle, those priorities have been put in a separate $3.5 trillion bill that Democrats are hoping to pass through a fast-track budget reconciliation process that wouldn’t need a single GOP vote – if, that is, all Democrats vote for it. But on the same day Ms. Sinema and fellow bipartisan negotiators announced their physical infrastructure deal, the Arizona senator also said she would not support a budget bill with that big a price tag, drawing the ire of progressives within her own party. That intraparty dispute could jeopardize the bipartisan bill when it comes to a vote in the House, where Democrats hold only a narrow margin and many Republicans are not expected to support the legislation.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona (center) and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (left), negotiators in the infrastructure talks, leave a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill with others in the bipartisan talks, in Washington, June 22, 2021.

“Good luck tanking your own party’s investment on childcare, climate action, and infrastructure while presuming you’ll survive a 3-vote House margin – especially after choosing to exclude members of color from negotiations and calling that a ‘bipartisan accomplishment,’” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. 

A pivot in approach

Ms. Sinema, an elusive senator who rarely talks to the press on Capitol Hill, may see echoes of herself in Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. She, too, kicked off her legislative career as a passionate 20-something, unabashedly railing against her adversaries. But her first term in the Arizona state legislature was, by her own account, a bust, prompting her to rethink her approach. 

“I do love to give fiery speeches,” she writes in her 2009 book, “UNITE and Conquer.” “But I also love people.”

She took a hard look at herself, and decided to invest in building relationships – including with some of the most conservative members of Arizona’s GOP-controlled legislature. By learning to talk about shared values and common interests before delving into specific outcomes, she started to get things done.

Ms. Sinema, who identifies as bisexual, led a successful effort to defeat a same-sex marriage ban by pioneering a new strategy. Because the proposed amendment would have affected the legal rights and health-care access of domestic partners, her coalition sought to broaden opposition to the measure by highlighting its impact on unmarried straight couples – including teachers, firefighters, and a sizable older population who had found new partners but couldn’t afford to give up their late spouse’s pension or Social Security payments. Arizona became the first state to defeat such a measure after 28 had passed elsewhere, but LGBTQ advocates were frustrated that she rejected their messaging around discrimination.

She also got a law passed protecting mothers who breastfeed in public by shifting the conversation from women’s rights to a mother’s need to care for her child, recruiting conservative mothers to lobby recalcitrant GOP lawmakers. And, together with then-state Rep. Andy Biggs, who has since become the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, she successfully pushed legislation to divest Arizona’s pension fund from companies perpetuating the Darfur genocide. 

In describing the recipe for her success, she exemplifies one of the key ingredients – humor – saying groups that take themselves too seriously usually peter out.

“Within a few months, it’s turned into the West Bay Peace Activists for the Protection and Liberation of Oppressed Peoples in Moldova, with a group membership of six,” writes Ms. Sinema, a colorful figure who once dubbed herself a “Prada socialist” in a nod to her striking wardrobe that reportedly includes more than 100 pairs of shoes as well as wigs that she sometimes wears to Senate votes. “And if you’re not wearing all-hemp clothing, listening to Cat Stevens, and making your own paper and soy ink, you are not welcome – which isn’t a problem for you, because you don’t want to work with those stiffs anyway.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who has been instrumental in developing the bipartisan infrastructure bill, credits Ms. Sinema’s sense of humor with defusing tensions that arose during the many long hours spent negotiating. She was also frank, telling her fellow senators to move on once the group had made a decision on a thorny point and some were hard put to accept their losses. 

“She was our ringleader. She kept us on task,” says GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. “She would say, ‘Enough! We resolved it. We’ve agreed. Let’s get refocused.’”

Her colleagues also credit Ms. Sinema, the first sitting member of Congress to complete an Ironman triathlon, with her relentless persistence and focus, even as various developments threatened to sink the talks. “She’s tireless,” says Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado. “There were a lot of distractions over the course of these last weeks. She wasn’t distracted.”

Even Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, one of the body’s most conservative Republicans, praises her.

“I think she’s demonstrated a lot of courage being willing to stand up to the more extreme voices in her party,” says Senator Cruz, who is not part of the bipartisan infrastructure group but has worked with Ms. Sinema on previous legislation. “She has expressed a lot of willingness to work together across the aisle on productive legislation. That’s a sentiment and a willingness that is unfortunately far too rare on Capitol Hill.” 

But where supporters see a welcome brand of Democratic pragmatism, others see a sellout.

It’s not a new charge; her office has been fielding vitriolic calls for years – and some of the worst ones come from fellow Democrats. But with an evenly split Senate, and Democrats hard put to get to the 60-vote threshold needed to prevent Republicans from blocking their bills, Ms. Sinema – together with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia – has come under particular fire for her refusal to scrap the filibuster. 

Jonathan J. Cooper/AP

Demonstrators march toward the office of Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on July 26, 2021, in Phoenix. Thirty-five people were arrested, including civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, while protesting Senator Sinema's opposition to ending the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.

Last month, she defended her decision to support the filibuster and thus compel cross-party cooperation because she sees it as the best way to find realistic, lasting solutions. 

“Bipartisan policies that stand the test of time could help heal our country’s divisions and strengthen Americans’ confidence that our government is working for all of us and is worthy of all of us,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

Remaining hurdles

The bipartisan infrastructure bill has made it farther than many detractors predicted, but it still faces a number of hurdles. This week, the Senate will need to take two procedural votes before it can vote on whether to pass the bill. The bipartisan group hopes to see that happen by week’s end, when senators are set to take a monthlong recess. Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has indicated he may delay their recess, if needed, to get the bill passed.

Preliminary votes have garnered more than enough Republican support to meet the 60-vote threshold needed. But the legislative text wasn’t completed until Sunday, and although senators were shown significant chunks of the bill ahead of time, they could well find details they don’t like buried in those 2,700 pages.

The bigger hurdle will come when the bill moves to the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi has vowed not to hold a vote on it until both chambers pass the $3.5 trillion bill with Democrats’ human infrastructure priorities. 

On Friday, the Problem Solvers Caucus pushed Speaker Pelosi to hold a standalone vote on the bipartisan bill as soon as the Senate passed it, with about two dozen lawmakers and even one of their dogs taking turns at a lectern outside the House. 

“Madam Speaker, we all know that you can single-handedly stop this bill,” said Dusty Johnson, a Republican member of the caucus from South Dakota, as an American flag atop the Capitol fluttered in the hot breeze. “Instead, we would ask that you honor the real work, honor the legislative breakthrough, by doing something simple, elegant, decent: Give us a vote.”

Senator Manchin, who along with Ms. Sinema has drawn the ire of more progressive Democrats for refusing to capitulate to his party, underscored Americans’ common interest in infrastructure investment.

“I’ve never seen a pothole with an ‘R’ or ‘D’ on it – it’ll bust your car, tear your car up, I don’t care who you are,” said Mr. Manchin of West Virginia. “This is what America wants.”

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Mr. Manchin, a Democrat who represents a mainly Republican state ranked 50th out of 50 states on its infrastructure, is among those leading the charge to pass this bill.

Senator Murkowski, a Republican whose home state of Alaska fares a little better at 40th, wants to see Congress do something concrete for once. Speaking after Mr. Manchin, she took aim at “messaging” bills that have little hope at passage but serve mainly to signal what is important to a party.

“We’re sick and tired of sending messages that just send a message and don’t fix Joe Manchin’s pothole,” she said.

Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Port St. Lucie, Florida, was one of only two of the largest U.S. cities that qualified as integrated in a recent study. The other was Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Alex Martinez has a curious observation about his hometown of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Though the city of 200,000 is 20% Latino, “There’s no ‘Hispanic’ neighborhood.” Though it is 18% Black, “there’s no ‘Black neighborhood,’” either.

Then, the local insurance broker who moved here in the early 1990s goes further: “And there’s really no poor or economically blighted areas here in town.”

To the unaware, Port St. Lucie might look like a rather nondescript Florida town, sprawling and sedate – a suburb in search of a city with nothing that resembled a downtown until developers built one about two decades ago.

But that might be its genius. According to a recent study, only two of 113 of the largest cities in the United States qualify as integrated. And one is Port St. Lucie. (The other is Colorado Springs, Colorado.)

Even as America’s major metropolitan regions become more diverse, the country has begun to resegregate into more racially homogeneous neighborhoods. More than 80% of the nation’s major metropolitan areas are more racially segregated today than they were in 1990, the study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found.

The trend is of momentous importance. Throughout American history, racially segregated neighborhoods have been a fundamental driver of profound racial disparities in education, policing, health care, and income. “Racial residential segregation is the glue that holds all these forms of systemic racism together,” Stephen Menendian, an author of the report, told The Atlantic. “You can’t solve extreme racial inequality in a segregated society.”

Port St. Lucie’s lessons are not cut and dried. A popular Black radio personality recalls the time about 10 years ago that someone threw a baseball inscribed with racial epithets through the front window of his home. And there has never been a Black city council member on Port St. Lucie’s five-seat council.

But a combination of factors – from Port St. Lucie’s relative newness as a town to the presence of a strong military community – all play some role in making it less segregated at the neighborhood level. And that has shaped the town in unusual ways. Poverty here is not found disproportionately among minority populations, and among all Florida cities with a population of more than 100,000, Port St. Lucie experienced the lowest number of crimes in 2020, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s 2019 Uniform Crime Report.

“The integration of the neighborhoods here in Port St. Lucie has always held solid,” says Mr. Martinez, who was a former professional jai alai player before moving to Port St. Lucie.

Why desegregation matters

Data point to the value of desegregated neighborhoods. When regions, cities, and neighborhoods are well integrated, many racial disparities tend to get smaller, notes Mr. Menendian, director of research at the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, in an interview.

Black children who grow up in highly segregated communities tend to make $4,000 less per year than Black children raised in majority white neighborhoods, and $1,000 less than those raised in integrated neighborhoods, Mr. Menendian’s analysis found.

Household incomes and home values in segregated communities are nearly half of those found in white neighborhoods, the study also found. And about 77% of residents in highly segregated white neighborhoods own homes, compared with 46% of residents in highly segregated communities of color.

Similar trends are apparent in Port St. Lucie. Poverty rates in the city reflect the diversity of the city itself. About 60% of its poorer residents are white, 13% are Black, and 18% Latino, according to an analysis of Census Bureau estimates by DataUSA.

Why Port St. Lucie is different

In many ways, Port St. Lucie was able to develop in ways unburdened by the legacies of historic segregation. In 1961, it was still a region of farms and fishing camps with a population of 330. From the start, Port St. Lucie emerged as a community with affordable housing. In fact, about 77% of Port St. Lucie’s integrated residents own homes across the diversity of its demographics.

In the first decade after Port St. Lucie’s incorporation, the General Development Corporation (GDC) designed a series of subdivisions with winding and curving roads rather than grids – an aesthetic decision that turned out to help shape its integrated character, says Paddy McCallister, a writer for Veteran’s Voice, which provides news for the area’s veteran population.

“It was that combination of things that came together to create communities that didn’t have that traditional right side and wrong side of the tracks kind of infrastructure,” he says. “And I’ll say now, I think the racial integration is mostly because the GDC started constructing homes after the Fair Housing Act. So, there’s really no redlining legacy present in its current infrastructure.”

Plus, the developers didn’t care who came. They were “building a lot of houses, and so they needed a lot of buyers, and they aggressively went to places like New York City – basically anywhere that they could find people who had money and wanted to buy a house in Florida,” Mr. McCallister says. “They were not picky about who was giving them money; they just wanted money.”

A higher-than-average presence of veterans and other military also contributes to the city’s integrated characters, says Mr. Menendian. The U.S. armed forces, he believes, demands the kind of positive intergroup cohesion, rooted in common goals and equal status, that help form well-integrated societies.

“The military creates a kind of belonging that does not exist in American society,” he says.

“I can’t say that about other places”

Rudy Howard, who had the baseball thrown through his window, is generally positive on Port St. Lucie’s racial dynamics. The city’s integrated character has helped inoculate the region from many of the tensions that have erupted between residents of color and police.

“I haven’t had a bad experience with the police here in Port St. Lucie, and I’ve lived all up and down the east coast of Florida, and I can’t say that about other places,” says Mr. Howard.

Mr. Howard has played no small part in shaping the community here. A small-business owner and past president of its Chamber of Commerce, he spearheaded the creation of the region’s Economic Development Council, chaired its Expressway and Bridge Authority, and has sat on the boards of two local hospitals.

But before he went on air to host his weekly “African American Scene” radio show recently, Mr. Howard had been pondering what true belonging means.

“I know this is kind of a different spin on what I normally would do, but I have some words that I’d like for us to play with a little bit,” Mr. Howard told his listeners, introducing a series of intimate questions: What is love? What is friendship? What is family?

These deeper questions are experiences that embody the essence of belonging, he said.

A sense of belonging

For social psychologists and others, integration is a crucial variable, too. Differing groups must be able to share common goals, cooperate as equals, and find support in their society’s laws and institutions. “All of the resources and institutions that matter in contemporary society are predominantly shaped by residential location,” says Mr. Menendian.

One drawback, says Mr. Howard, is that integration can sometimes make problems seem more diffuse. “Because Port St. Lucie is so spread out, and there’s not a Black community or neighborhood, there is an illusion that there are no problems for minority kids, and that’s just not the case,” he says. “It’s just not open and obvious unless you’re a member of the community.”

Increased political representation would help, he says. “The number one thing right now is a lack of diversity in terms of administration and representation on the city council.”

Despite some negative experiences, Mr. Howard says Port St. Lucie has a lot to celebrate.

“On Friday nights when I sat in the stands to watch my son play high school football, I would look out at the kids and their families coming to the game. ... It was like it was the United Nations,” he says.

When his family hosts neighborhood cookouts, there is a remarkable ethnic mix in his backyard.

“I used to think to myself sometimes, I wish I could take this picture and give it to everybody and say, ‘Look, this is what we could be if we let ourselves be this.’”

When Havana-based musician El Funky was invited to collaborate on a song about the need for change in Cuba, he was thrilled. He admired the other musicians involved in the project and felt a strong connection to the lyrics, which call for a new vision for the island.

But he never imagined the reggaeton song and video, “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life), released in February, would become the unofficial anthem for unprecedented protests on July 11.

Exhausted by the daily hardships of a crumbling economy, a worsening pandemic, and a government slow to respond to citizens’ needs, thousands of Cubans poured into the streets in more than 40 cities, without any central organization. There had been nothing like it in Cuba’s history.

“‘Homeland and Life’ turns the famous phrase of Fidel Castro – Homeland or Death – on its head,” says El Funky, born Eliecer Márquez Duany. “But the reality in Cuba is that the levels of need and misery are so dire that this was really the moment to change that national motto. We Cubans want life and prosperity; we want a better future.”

For the protesters and their supporters, the idea of “Patria y Vida” is rooted in hope. The majority are young, never knew a Cuba pre-Castro, and are plugged into social media and the outside world. The song expresses the mood that inspired so many people to risk speaking out publicly against the authorities.

“This idea of homeland and life, I relate to it so much,” says Deisy Castillo Fernandez, a teacher in her mid-20s living in Havana. She says she was nearly brought to tears when she stepped into the crowd of protesters on July 11, her first protest ever, and heard someone start a call-and-response with the word “freedom!”

“We love our homeland. We love our country,” Ms. Castillo says. “I’m very happy to be Cuban. What I’m not happy about is the government. When the people together rise up, I think it’s because we just can’t do this anymore,” she says. “We can’t suffer like this. All these laws and restrictions against us – we want Cuba and a future, not death.”

Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

Alberto Betancourt and his mother, Mayra Perez, pose with a picture of his sister Daylin Betancourt, who was detained by police during a protest, in Havana, July 19, 2021.

“Wake-up call”

Edel Pérez, an actor and news presenter at an online outlet in Havana, says he has regularly had to stand in line for more than six hours over the past year in order to buy staples like chicken. “Sometimes I arrive at 5 a.m. and when it’s finally my turn, I find they’ve run out,” he says. “It all starts over again the next day.”

When he heard “Patria y Vida” for the first time, he felt like it put words to his ever-growing desire to simply have a chance at making his dreams come true in his homeland.

“Let’s no longer shout ‘homeland or death’ but ‘homeland and life,’ and start building what we dreamed of, what they destroyed,” the artists sing. “May no more blood flow for daring to think differently.”

Although the protests were stamped out by police, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel called his supporters onto the street to “defend the revolution,” Mr. Pérez expects to see more large-scale demonstrations in the future. “We’re finally expressing everything that’s built up over the past 62 years,” since Castro’s revolution, he says.

The government is no doubt worried, not least because Mr. Díaz-Canel lacks the revolutionary bona fides of his predecessors, both Castros. The wave of spontaneous protests was largely organized on social media, which has taken off in the past few years as long-restricted internet access spreads. After the protest, internet service and some landlines were cut. The state-run media has painted the largely peaceful protesters as looters and vandals; Mr. Díaz-Canel blamed U.S. sanctions for the discontent, and citizens report a beefed-up police presence on the streets.

The Cuban economy contracted by more than 11% last year, as the pandemic battered tourism and remittances from abroad. Like Mr. Pérez, many Cubans are queuing for hours for basic goods and experiencing prolonged electricity outages during some of the hottest months of the year. COVID-19 restrictions intensify their misery.

Eliana Aponte/AP

Residents get food at a government-subsidized bodega in Havana, July 15, 2021. Many Cubans are queuing for hours for basic goods, a frustration that fueled this month's protests.

The protests “are a wake-up call for the government, but not because they realized there is a problem. The government knew about these problems” of hunger, poverty, and suffering, says Rafael Hernández, editor of Temas, a Havana-based social science journal. “It made them see the situation is much more urgent and critical than they thought. The protests showed the government can’t wait anymore. Cubans need a response now.”

There have been some concessions since the protests, such as temporarily allowing travelers to bring food and medicine into Cuba untaxed. Few people are able to travel to and from the island during the pandemic, however.

The price of expression

In the early years following Cuba’s revolution, musicians were largely overlooked by the government, says Robin Moore, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Texas at Austin who focuses on Cuba. “The first generation of Cuban youth raised under [Castro’s] new leadership, a new education system, exposed to a lot of ideas about socialism and leftist ideals, were questioning a lot of things,” Dr. Moore says. “Eventually, the government decided it was better to use these musicians as advocates for the revolution, so they started giving them support ... and they were expected to conform to the government’s position.”

El Funky says he’s been expelled from the Cuban association of rap artists, which means he is no longer eligible for monthly stipends and won’t have his music played on the radio or TV.

“Artists have to walk a fine line. And clearly that line is being crossed right now,” says Dr. Moore. “What I’m seeing from the ‘Patria y Vida’ folks is a lot of sympathy for the Cuban people. There’s a real sense of solidarity that might not have been expressed by early artists in Cuba,” who may have called for creating a better society, but didn’t call for a change in regime. “In that sense, ‘Patria y Vida’ is really raising the bar [on protest songs in Cuba], and those on the island are putting their careers on the line.”

Yet for some Cubans, the song’s popularity is a distraction.

“We don’t need more mottoes, and that’s what it is, whether Homeland or Death or Homeland and Life,” says Sergio Castillo, a TV director in Havana who supports the protesters’ cause, but felt it was risky amid rising COVID-19 cases. “I’d prefer reflection, as a country,” he says. “It’s fine to say you’re disappointed or frustrated or want things to improve, but what about concrete proposals?”

Despite the government crackdown on the protesters – upwards of 500 activists have been detained, Cuban human rights groups say, and a number of them have been subjected to rapid, lawyerless trials – people like Ms. Castillo insist they’ve lost their sense of fear.

“We’re not afraid anymore,” she says, despite being sprayed with tear gas as she returned home from the march in Havana. “We’re not afraid to live, and now that we’ve started saying it we won’t stop: We want liberty from oppression.”

Cecelia Lee never imagined her family could be so quiet. But as she and 300 of Sunisa Lee’s family members and friends gathered in an Oakdale, Minnesota, events center last week to cheer her on thousands of miles away at the Tokyo Olympics, the gymnast’s aunt says the room reached “cricket silence.”

Judges were about to announce the winner of the individual all-around final – the most prestigious title for an Olympic gymnast. And then what they’d only dared dream about happened. Ms. Lee, the first-ever Hmong American to participate in an Olympic Games, won – becoming the fifth American woman to do so in a row.

“It felt so amazing; we had so much pride in knowing that she got it,” says Cecelia Lee. “All of us were feeling like, this doesn’t happen to an ordinary person, and then one day it does. It’s surreal.”  

The viewing party was just one of many events that Minnesota’s Hmong community has organized in her honor over the years. It’s held fundraisers to raise money toward her training and travel, and a large send-off in the days before she headed to Tokyo – which she was unable to attend due to COVID-19 concerns.

“Gymnastics can be a costly sport, so anytime funds dried up, there was no doubt, we were going to step in and help,” says Cecelia Lee.  

The support of Sunisa Lee’s large family – she is one of six children – and the Hmong community in Minnesota has been crucial in catapulting her to success. Her parents have backed her dreams of being an Olympic gymnast, with father John once building her a makeshift balance beam to practice on in the backyard.

In Hmong American communities, where children see few professional athletes they can identify with, sports are often viewed as more of a hobby than a path to success. But Ms. Lee’s accomplishments – in addition to her individual gold, a team silver and now a bronze in uneven bars – are reshaping that image, and shining a spotlight on the community as a whole. As Ms. Lee looks to her final balance beam event Tuesday, she’s bringing more than pride; she’s changing perceptions about what it means to be Hmong American, both inside and outside the community.

Natacha Pisarenko/AP

Sunisa Lee of the United States performs on the uneven bars during the artistic gymnastics women's apparatus final at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Aug. 1, 2021, in Tokyo. So far, Ms. Lee has earned bronze in the uneven bars, gold in the individual all-around, and silver in the team all-around.

“Forty years ago, no one thought the Hmong people could move from surviving in the jungles [of Asia] to the jungles of America. They underestimated us,” says Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University, St. Paul, who came to the United States as a refugee at 9 years old. “Sunisa, a child of refugees, has won at the Olympics. We’re so emotional. It epitomizes the hopes and dreams our parents had for us: Work hard and you’ll be successful. It’s possible in America, the land of opportunity.” 

“You can do what you love”

The Hmong people, an ethnic group living mainly in mountainous regions of China, Laos, and Vietnam, hold an important place in U.S. history. In the 1960s, amid the Vietnam War, the CIA recruited thousands of Hmong men in Laos, known as the “Secret Army,” to fight alongside U.S. soldiers. Meanwhile, those who remained saw their towns bombed and burned, and many were displaced.

In the 1970s, the first wave of Hmong refugees arrived in the U.S., and Minnesota is now home to one of the largest populations in the country, at more than 66,000. Nearly 60% of Hmong Americans are considered low-income, and 1 in 4 live below the poverty line, according to a legal aid group, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles.

In the U.S., many parents put a premium on education as the best way for their children to get ahead.

“Women especially are very much pushed to get married and have children, but the main focus is on education. ... Go out, get a higher degree. That’s the key to having a successful future,” says Kang Vang, a filmmaker who teaches citizenship classes at the Hmong Cultural Center in St. Paul. “I think parents see it as, those who are educated don’t have to have the physically hard lifestyle they may have had themselves.”  

Even if many parents may not see sports as a means to an end, athletics are a vibrant part of the community. Every July, St. Paul holds the Midwest Hmong International Freedom Festival to display the sports, arts, and music talents of Hmong people from around the world. Hmong pro athletes include soccer players, a golfer, and an ice skater, and badminton is huge in high schools.

Still, for many young people, putting extracurriculars first often means forging a parent’s signature or fibbing about where they’re going after school. Lue “Finisher” Thao is a St. Paul-based break dancer who says in high school his parents thought he was in a gang, as he often sneaked out at night. But he was only going to dance at the local rec center or at friends’ houses.

David Joles /Star Tribune/AP/File

Dancers from the Community School of Excellence, a K-8 Hmong language and culture school, make their way along the parade route during the last day of the Minnesota State Fair, Sept. 3, 2018, in Falcon Heights.

Now, even if Mr. Thao runs his Cypher Side Dance School in St. Paul and danced at the 2018 Super Bowl halftime show, his parents remain skeptical about his career choice. He hopes Ms. Lee’s win will help other parents recognize nontraditional life paths.  

“It’s so awesome to see a Hmong American paving the way, to show you don’t have to be a doctor or lawyer,” says Mr. Thao. “You can do what you love to do if it’s a positive thing; you just have to work hard for it.”    

Teachable moment

Ms. Lee’s all-around title comes at a time when the Asian American community needed a win. Hate crimes against Asians in America rose sharply in 2020, according to advocacy groups, and António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, has expressed profound concern over spikes in violence against people of Asian descent during the pandemic.

Watching an Asian American athlete reach international fame not only helps overturn general stereotypes, but it could also be an opportunity to educate Americans about the Hmong community, specifically.

“We get a lot of questions, like ‘Who are the Huh-mongs’ or ‘Are you from Mongolia?’” says Cecelia Lee, Sunisa’s aunt. “They’re not trying to be disrespectful, but I hope [Sunisa’s visibility] will educate the country, not just about the Hmong people but everyone who is from a different community.”  

The young gymnast is already having an impact on her hometown. Following her all-around gold, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz declared last Friday “Sunisa Lee Day” in her honor. 

And more parents within Minnesota’s Hmong community are starting to see the benefits of gymnastics specifically. Ms. Lee’s coaches at Midwest Gymnastics Center, where she has trained since she was 6, say the gym has started to see more Hmong American girls, and Asian Americans in general, since she became a household name in the past few years.

“Now that parents are seeing that athletics can be a path to education, they’re starting to see things in a different light,” says Punnarith Koy, Ms. Lee’s first coach. She will head to Auburn University in the fall on a full gymnastics scholarship. “[Her win] will have a huge impact. Anyone at her level is an instant role model.”

Cultural historian Caseen Gaines dives into one of the most momentous stage productions in the history of Black theater in “Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way.”

The 1921 Broadway musical “Shuffle Along” told the satirical story of a small-town mayoral race, but more important than its plot was the fact that it boasted an all-Black cast, and its music, script, and song lyrics were written by Black artists.

Mr. Gaines’ book argues that “Shuffle Along” presented a far richer and subtler vision of Black life than any other Broadway production before it. But the show also included blackface and racial stereotypes, making it difficult to revive; because of this, it’s been largely forgotten. (It was, however, the subject of a 2016 Tony Award-nominated “making-of musical,” which was also titled “Shuffle Along.”) 

Mr. Gaines spoke with the Monitor about his decision to revisit “Shuffle Along.” 

What drew you to write about a musical that no one wants to perform any longer?

In looking at the story of composer Eubie Blake, lyricist Noble Sissle, and writer-performers Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, I was reminded of artists like Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to win an Academy Award; [comedian] Stepin Fetchit; and William “Billie” Thomas Jr., who’s better known as Buckwheat from the “Our Gang” comedies. I was thinking about these people who were really quite progressive and opened doors in a lot of ways, particularly in the early part of the 20th century. They have been locked in the vault because their portrayals have been viewed as problematic, stereotypical, and degrading to Black people. 

While I certainly understand that perspective, I also think that something becomes lost when Black folks don’t have the opportunity to see themselves 

in these spaces that are often thought of as primarily white spaces, as theater still is today. But also I think something is lost for white folks as well, who don’t have to, as [playwright] August Wilson said, face what so many Black people have had to endure in this country.

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Caseen Gaines is a cultural historian and author of "Footnotes: The Black Artists Who Rewrote the Rules of the Great White Way."

So we shouldn’t neglect the fact that these problematic productions existed? 

Absolutely, and I would even go a step further and say that there are all sorts of works of art that are problematic, and yet they are still remembered and revered. Particularly in theater, there are shows that are sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic that are performed in high schools and community theaters and revived on Broadway with frequency, and yet we don’t cast those aside. 

It’s a complicated history. Certainly I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I think that the 1921 “Shuffle Along” should be revived on Broadway in its original iteration, but I certainly do feel there is a double standard, and I think that there is value – immense value – in remembering that this show existed.

Was there anything like a precedent to “Shuffle Along” on Broadway?

There were a number of predecessors to “Shuffle Along,” the most significant being by the duo of [vaudevillians] Williams and Walker. I would make the distinction that while there were shows that had played on Broadway, as in on the street of Broadway, none of these shows actually commanded Broadway ticket prices. They were novelties; they were kind of expanded vaudeville shows but they did get rave reviews.

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How different was “Shuffle Along” from the shows that preceded it in terms of the way it presented Black people?

A few days before “Shuffle Along” opened at the 63rd Street Theatre, the four creators ran into the editor of Variety, and he [essentially] said, “Best of luck to you, but your show is dead in the water because white people, and white women in particular, will never pay Broadway prices to see Black women onstage.” It wasn’t just seeing Black women onstage, but it was seeing Black women onstage outside of the well-established, stereotypical roles that were born out of minstrelsy.

While [“Shuffle Along”] did have Black actors in blackface in terms of the comedians, all of the women were presented as real people. The very notion that there would be a Black man and a Black woman onstage who would convey love for each other, and not have that love played for humor but played for sentimentality, the producers of the show got threats [basically] saying, “You should be careful that the white folks in the audience don’t riot at the sight of it.”

The show had an overwhelmingly favorable response when it premiered, among both Black and white audiences. Were there dissenting voices in the Black community who felt “Shuffle Along” didn’t go far enough in breaking stereotypes?

There were. One of the most significant is probably [Harlem Renaissance writer] Claude McKay, who really enjoyed “Shuffle Along” but thought that there was such a missed opportunity in not going far enough in its representation of Black women. Nearly all of the women who were in the cast were of a lighter skin complexion. 

[McKay] was quite vocal in saying what a shame it is that this show is so good, and such a success, and yet it is not exposing white audiences to the full range of the beauty of Black women.

“Shuffle Along” anticipated later Black Broadway productions such as “The Wiz” and “Dreamgirls,” but did the show open doors for Black artists in the shorter term?

The most undeniable achievement of “Shuffle Along” was that it burst the door wide open for representation on Broadway. The 2016 Broadway season was celebrated for being the most diverse in Broadway history ... but there were more Black folks working on Broadway in the mid-1920s than there are today.

While the entertainment industry worked to close some of those doors over time, there was a brief period where the doors were completely blown off the hinges. 

Reuters

Fans and relatives welcome Tunisia's Ahmed Hafnaoui, who won the Olympic swimming gold medal in the men's 400m freestyle, upon his arrival home in Tunis July 31.

Can a sports hero change society? Tunisia is about to find out. On July 31, the North African nation welcomed home an 18-year-old swimmer, Ahmed Ayoub Hafnaoui, who stunned the world at the Tokyo Olympics by winning the 400-meter freestyle.

To many Tunisians, his victory – which came the same day that President Kais Saied suspended parliament and took full powers – was a reminder of the ability of the individual to lift a country out of passivity and fatalism.

“Thank you for this ray of hope in the middle of our dark night,” wrote one Tunisian on Twitter. In the Leaders publication, one commentator wrote, “This poor Tunisia, this miserable Tunisia ... fights with dignity through its young people, its brave sports soldiers.”

Eya Jrad, a teacher of security studies at the Mediterranean School of Business, told The Washington Post that the gold-medal win by Ayoub (as he is called) is about youth reclaiming their space. “Right now,” she said, “we don’t have anything ... and people just want to see they actually can make it from nothing.”

His victory in swimming’s premier event was all the more astounding because Mr. Hafnaoui barely made it to the finals. He qualified by only 14-hundredths of a second and was forced to swim in lane eight where the waves of competitors can slow you down. Yet he was able to knock almost three seconds off his personal best time.

How did this underdog do it? “It was hard work,” he said as he dedicated his gold medal to all the Tunisian people.

If the reactions to his resilience ring a bell, it is because Tunisia set a famous example for how an individual can make a difference. In December 2010, a young fruit vendor who had been abused by police stood up for his rights and sacrificed his own life, triggering a democratic revolution in Tunisia that felled a dictator and sparked protests across the Middle East. 

The 2011 Arab Spring was ignited with the single act of an individual. While rulers in much of the region still treat people more as subjects than as citizens, Tunisia’s ongoing struggles can still provide inspiration. Mr. Hafnaoui’s “hard work” in winning a gold was more than a momentary distraction for a country in the grips of COVID-19 and a setback to its democracy. It showed how individual Tunisians can choose a better image of themselves, relying on an inner autonomy that overcomes outward adversity.