This is an opinion column

I somehow forgot that Robin Roberts — basketball star, ESPN groundbreaker, “Good Morning America” co-host and childhood bowling champ — was born in Tuskegee, Alabama.

She is the proud daughter of a proud Tuskegee Airman.

I should have known that, even though Roberts moved off to Mississippi as a kid. She is another strong woman with Alabama roots who did remarkable things with the traits she calls “grace and grit.”

Her parents handed her those qualities. But they are shared by so many other women.

Rosa Parks. Lilly Ledbetter. Helen Keller. Julia Tutwiler. Angela Davis. Condoleezza Rice. So many formidable people, graceful and gritty and driven, perhaps most importantly, by conscience.

On and on it goes. Harper Lee, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Durr, Tallulah Bankhead. Women forged in a state – tempered strong by it – that demands much from women but rarely treats them as equal partners.

They have always faced unfair challenges. They still do.

The Commonwealth Fund this year again listed Alabama as a “bottom-performing state” for women’s health systems, and 47th in women’s health and reproductive care outcomes — or bad stuff that happens when women get pregnant.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research this year named Alabama one of eight states where mothers with full-time jobs were paid less than 70 cents on the dollar compared to fathers. That group has studied Alabama and found it lacking in every category, from political participation to pay and survival.

It ought to make us all mad.

I read the reports of our failures almost every year and, perhaps ironically, think of the women who strengthened me. My mom, my wife, my daughter, my friends and co-workers. They deserve better.

I think of those who strengthened us all. Teachers, doctors, cops, writers, neighbors. Surely they deserve better, too.

I think of those we can all admire for their grace and grit and guidance, Robin Roberts herself. She plowed through sexism and racism and diseases of the body and the status quo to reach the top of her business.

On Saturday in Tampa the Poynter Institute for Media Studies gave Roberts a medal for lifetime achievement in journalism, which was a big deal. Poynter President Neal Brown asked her about the obstacles she faced as a woman sports reporter in the South years ago, when she had to work harder than male counterparts. She had to bust down doors to get the interviews they took for granted.

Brown suggested she might be angry about that, and it seemed to take Roberts by surprise.

She sputtered a moment, uncharacteristically. And then she went back to those Alabama roots. It struck me that she responded like many of those strong Alabama women — known or not — might do.

She spoke of her father, the Tuskegee Airman, and “the crap that they went through.” She spoke of the strong, gritty people who gave her strength.

“I often remember the trailblazing members of my family and what they went through,” she said. “So if somebody was going to give me a hard time because I wanted to be a sports journalist, bring it on.”

Bring it on.

I heard another woman, that same night, say she was stalked and sexualized for being in the public eye. I overheard another woman, a boss, lament that male subordinates dismissed and discounted her expertise. I’ve seen it, of course. Our world demands women be better, and stronger, and more agreeable, and smarter just to stay level with men.

As they are paid less, penalized for having our babies, and called weak.

I’d be angry. Hell, I am angry.

But that’s the real reason I wanted to talk about Robin Roberts. Because anger’s not enough. If we are to succeed, or change things, or simply survive, we need more.

She talked of optimism as “a muscle that gets stronger with use.” She talked of her “habit of not seeing a glass half empty or a half full, but simply seeing the glass.” She admitted to anger, but refused to give it to her enemy as ammunition.

You can only conquer those things with a strength that comes from appreciating joy — which is altogether different from happiness. Happiness, Roberts said, is caused by something and is therefore conditional. Joy, well that’s something else.

“Joy is when you go home and you see your child,” she said. “Joy is just the simple, you know, your coffee is hot this morning. It’s those little moments…That’s what I do and it really brings me joy.”

I love that.

The world is a tough, unfair place. And joy is not just a pleasure. It is jet fuel.

So what can you say? Bring it on.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner.