These days, everywhere I look it seems like I find stories and articles about conflict between different groups of people. Maybe it’s because I’m more sensitive to such issues because I’m a sociologist. Whatever it may be, it is refreshing to occasionally find an article that illustrates how Americans can bridge various divisions and help one another. In this case, a football team from an affluent, virtually all-White high school helped its poorer, predominantly minority rival salvage their season:

Friday night’s season opener pitting the Cold Spring Harbor Seahawks against their perennial championship archrival, the Roosevelt Rough Riders, is the football game that almost didn’t happen. The Seahawks come from a wealthy white Long Island district with top-rated schools, while the Rough Riders live in a working-class community of blacks and Hispanics whose dysfunctional schools forced a state takeover in 2002. . . .

[T]heir annual face-off was jeopardized this spring when Roosevelt’s budget troubles eliminated the district’s entire interscholastic sports program. Then members of the Seahawks’ booster club began sending in donations, adding to the $15,000 that Roosevelt parents had managed to raise. A Seahawks captain, Peter Ottaviano, and a few teammates went to Roosevelt’s turf to join their rivals in fund-raising car washes.

And at the end of August, an anonymous businessman from Cold Spring Harbor sent an eye-popping $20,000, just in time for the school board to reinstate the football program before classes resumed.

This is a nice example of people coming together across both racial and social class differences in order to do the right thing. Major kudos to both high schools, particular Cold Spring Harbor, and also to the anonymous businessperson who contributed $20,000 to the effort to save Roosevelt’s football season. Let’s hope that we see more examples of this cooperation and unity in our society.