"Kids - in a really good way - can talk about their differences without the baggage that adults have"
About this Quote
There is a quietly radical optimism baked into Jim McKay's line: the idea that difference is not the problem; the adult world is. Framed as praise for kids "in a really good way", he’s not romanticizing childhood innocence so much as indicting how quickly society teaches us to flinch. The key word is "baggage" - a blunt, almost journalistic shorthand for inherited prejudice, status anxiety, coded language, and the reflex to sort people into teams before you even know their names.
McKay spent a career narrating public life through sports, where difference is constantly on display - race, nationality, class, body type - and where the mythology of fair play competes with the reality of exclusion. In that context, the observation lands as both a lesson and a rebuke: kids can name what they see because they haven't yet learned to treat certain facts as taboo or dangerous. Adults, by contrast, often pretend not to notice differences while still acting on them, outsourcing honesty to euphemism and "politeness."
The parenthetical aside, "in a really good way", does rhetorical work. It anticipates the adult suspicion that talking about difference is inherently divisive, then swats it away. McKay is arguing for a kind of clear-eyed candor: conversation without choreography, curiosity without moral panic. The subtext is that progress isn't just about better policies; it's about unlearning the adult habit of turning every difference into a threat, or a performance, instead of a starting point.
McKay spent a career narrating public life through sports, where difference is constantly on display - race, nationality, class, body type - and where the mythology of fair play competes with the reality of exclusion. In that context, the observation lands as both a lesson and a rebuke: kids can name what they see because they haven't yet learned to treat certain facts as taboo or dangerous. Adults, by contrast, often pretend not to notice differences while still acting on them, outsourcing honesty to euphemism and "politeness."
The parenthetical aside, "in a really good way", does rhetorical work. It anticipates the adult suspicion that talking about difference is inherently divisive, then swats it away. McKay is arguing for a kind of clear-eyed candor: conversation without choreography, curiosity without moral panic. The subtext is that progress isn't just about better policies; it's about unlearning the adult habit of turning every difference into a threat, or a performance, instead of a starting point.
Quote Details
| Topic | Youth |
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