Whose Team Are You On? Why I Root for Black Olympians
It is Olympic time again and the world dons the colors of country and land to celebrate the international achievements of one's fellow citizens. For me however, leading up to the Olympic Games, I saw a former status of mine on Facebook that I posted during World Cup on why I cannot root for America. It is in fact difficult, no impossible, for me to root for America during international competition because I feel no connection to America, save regret. Very rarely do I ever feel like an American. I am a black American and as such I root for black Americans and other Blacks throughout the diaspora exclusively. When blacks are not present in international competitions, I root for other people of color or nations that the American mainstream find unappealing. No, I do not have an attachment to a country that absorbs the athleticism of black Americans and discards the black athlete along with the rest of his or her kin. Rooting for one's country brings into question the nature of the relationship between one's country and oneself.
William Edward Burghardt Dubois describes the relationship between black Americans and America as the double-consciousness, or the eternal battle of gaze. The constant viewing of myself and my people from the white perspective leaves me with a contemptible relationship with my country of birth. It is a strategy for most Americans to play somewhat stupid and pretend they have no understanding in America's investment in racism how that impacts black psychologies and in this case, rooting interests.
Dubois, in the Souls of Black Folks, described the double-consciousness in these terms:
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
But the doors of opportunity, if not closed in our faces, are certainly controlled by the American white power structure. I do wonder how many Americans debate this fact. Consequently, I cannot root for athletes that despite our national commonality, are not invested whatsoever in strife, violence and ambiguity of being black in America. What connection do I have to Katy LeDecky or Michael Phelps? Will their winning anything lend psychological or practical support to my reality? Black athletes however understand the double-consciousness DuBois wrote about and have used the Olympics as a stage to express to the world the pain and hypocrisy blacks endure while "representing" America.
In the first half of the 20th Century, James Baldwin stated that to be black in America and to also be proud, assertive and independent would mean that one would be "enraged" nearly all of the time. Truer words have never been spoken. Weeks off the heels of yet another rerun of state condoned murder of black citizens and centuries into the black experience in America, I am asked to root for Uncle Sam. No thanks. But I will root for USA Basketball for obvious reasons.
There was a time when black Olympians spoke for the black community. Unlike professional sport leagues, the Olympics represented the true ethic of sport: "winning the right way". Winning in the Olympics was not just a display of physical superiority, but a moral judgement to the world that your national way of life is also superior. Apparently, that can be true about the Cold War, but not about race.
After watching Simone Manuel become the the first black American to win an individual swimming medal, she was asked by a reporter how she felt becoming the first African-American to win an individual swimming medal. She responded by stating,
“I’m super glad with the fact that I can be an inspiration to others and hopefully diversify the sport. But, at the same time, I would like there to be a day where there are more of us and it’s not ‘Simone, the black swimmer.’”
She added: “This medal is not just for me, it’s for some of the African-Americans who have been before me and been inspirations”.
Manuel also spoke on the current wave of police shootings of unarmed black males in America, that has become President Obama’s shameful legacy.
“It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality,” Manuel said. “This win hopefully brings hope and change to some of the issues that are going on. My color just comes with the territory.”
I found her answer symptomatic of my duplicity in watching these Olympic Games. I also find her answer symptomatic of the unfortunate pattern of seeing less of a connection to even black athletes who represent America. Although, I find myself rooting exclusively for black athletes, regardless of country, when asked specifically about reaching milestones for the black community, I expect athletes to speak directly to us as black people. On first glance, Manuel gave appeals to general blackness in some respects. But that generic appeal is the only one that white America respects. There are unwritten rules to follow when black athletes are baited into race questions. Do not mention a connection to the plight of your people by name, but rather show docile appreciation for your accomplishment and by God, take no position yourself---OR ELSE!!
I can tell by how she answered the question of being the first 'african-american' swimmer to medal in a single event that the collective consciousness between black athletes and their communities continues to wane. She accepts the title as "1st black" as a singular achievement, validating her methods of advancement, yet refrains from connecting her individual success to a collective and historical resistance against white oppression. It is not hard to understand the motivation behind her statements. Integration has meant for black Americans that we subvert, if not totally ignore, our "twoness". The very distinction that causes for us to stand out in the first place--our skin color, is the very connection we must limit if not detach from entirely. Police brutality has a name. Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, Rodney King, Korryn Gaines, Tamir Rice, the Black Panthers among many, many more.
However, Manuel is a Stanford swimmer, coached by a white man and surrounded largely, if not exclusively, by white teammates. Does this not have any affect on the psychology of black athletes and their ability to speak as a black person? It certainly has an impact on this black viewer.
Manuel was asked a question directly related to her blackness, yet answered without ever mentioning black people. The generic claim of celebrating "all those who came before me and come after me" is the new allusion to post-racial solidarity for raceless black Americans in 2016. It is the appeal to a race consciousness without actually appealing to race consciousness. This new politically correct race language is akin to the perplexing popular culture adoption of the moniker "the n-word" to skirt around the perceived offensive use of the word "nigger". Yet, every American in hearing the term "n-word" automatically reinforces the existence of nigger in their minds because that is the precise purpose of using the n-word. The speaker gets the political points of not being seen as a complete bigot whatsoever, while simultaneously getting the full advantages of knowing that their listening audience understands that they purposefully intend for them to know and substitute "nigger" and all its connotations right in place for the "n-word". How stupid is this? Well, it is America.
But this duplicity of racial racelessness is only a very recent phenomenon to which white and especially black Americans seem completely unaware. It was not long ago that black Olympians, particularly when asked about how they felt about being a black Olympian, would answer with amazing clarity that not only displayed understanding of the black double-consciousness, but also displayed their personal allegiance with the plight of us, their people, not the mandates of the egregiously hypocritical white American masses. Tommie Smith and John Carlos are the poster boys for black Olympic solidarity. Although most Americans cherish the enduring legacy of the image of their iconic salute, they ignore or are possibly unaware of the personal sacrifices that accompanied their humanity. It must be remembered that America punishes black citizens for being proud, independent and vocal. In this light, their attachment to their people, to us, is the iconic gesture of the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. These men were immediately suspended from the American Olympic Team, given 48-hours to leave Mexico, then were denied jobs and services upon returning to the United States for representing the plights of black Americans through their individual achievements.
Repeatedly, in the face of direct white American hostility and violence, black athletes were asked to make connections between their singular achievement and the impact that would have for their people. And routinely, black athletes accepted such opportunities as platforms earned from their positions and esteem as athletes to make statements regarding racialized poverty, apartheid and violence faced by rank and file blacks in America. Manuel had a similar platform to at least place herself and her accomplishment within the clear and unambiguous liberation struggle of all blacks like Olympians of the past. This is not mere conjecture. These Rio Olympics are occurring weeks after state-supported violence against blacks in Baton Rouge, LA, Minneapolis, MN and Dallas, TX. Tommie Smith and John Carlos took their stance only months after the assassination of Dr. King and only weeks after the truncated Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. I guess there still are no similarities. Not only did Manuel not mention any recent events by name, she never mentioned blackness itself at all. Blacks Olympians, until recently always understood their prowess to be a platform for the cause of Justice for blacks in America.
The duplicity for black Olympians, and black Americans watching the Olympics extend far beyond just taking opportunities to connect oneself to one's people. Black solidarity is one of the only positive defense mechanisms protecting the black psychology and psyche from the constant rejection by white America to basic black humanity. So often, the progress of race relations is spoken from the position of black advancement. But there must also be a voice given to institutional white resistance to black advancement. Even as Olympians, the general American public, and her chief politicians, would certainly tout black American athletic prowess, then discard the athlete him or herself. In 1936, as a college student participating in the Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens single-handedly destroyed Adolf Hitler's purported goal of showcasing white supremacy through athletic competency. Winning 4 gold medals, including the 100-meters, Jesse Owens became a sensation in Germany and throughout Europe. Yet in his own autobiography, Jesse Owens does not recount Hitler as rude or objectionable. Owens asserts that Hitler acknowledged his victories and granted Owens a salute. Jesse Owens accuses his own President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of not even telegraphing a 'Congratulations' to the Olympic champ. Moreover, for black Olympians in general, despite defeating America's soon-to-be WWII foe, upon their arrival back home from Germany, they were systematically denied jobs, honors and nearly every lucrative avenue of support offered to white Olympians achieving less or nothing at all. Despite such injustices, America believe that by being the "first" black American to do thus and so, the road is made easier for all other blacks coming later. Progress.
It is amazing how easy it is set aside the pain, torment and degradation the "first" black success stories had to endure. Americans digest their own hatred assuming that if it gets better for every black person afterwards, then the "first black" paid the appropriate dues. Such fatalism destroys any effort to see all black people as people, deserving of their humanity now. Simone Manuel being the "first black swimmer" to medal proves we have yet to shed this ideology and appreciation of the "first". What has changed then, is the obligation of the first black American to be the standard-bearer of our cause.
Black Olympians, pre-integration, trained and developed in predominantly black spaces, more so than many do today. Connection to and reliance on one's community is a strong factor as to why black athletes could and would speak courageously and gloriously to their people, offering support and a perspective that confirmed to nearly every black person that we are not crazy for our suspicions, anger and reservations against living, working and being within the mainsteams of white society. Current black athletes, who live, work and exist off the legacies of past black Olympians often do not train, live or work in predominantly black spaces. They do not have the opportunity to. Particularly in Olympic sports that do not have large numbers of black Americans competing to begin with as Manuel denotes, (sports like swimming, tennis, gymnastics, water polo, archery, golf), the lack of black institutional and psychological support could account for their shrinking abilities to speak to the black experience when asked. Gabby Douglass actually had to leave her family environment and relocate and train in white dominated spaces. Simone Biles, and Simone Manuel, to varying degrees, have similar experiences of being in traditional white spaces to gain access to the skills and resources needed to become an Olympian for team USA.
Wilma Rudolph has a dissimilar story in terms of her personal and athletic development. Born the 20th of twenty-two children, Rudolph contracted polio at age 4. Certainly at the outset, Rudolph's disadvantages then compare to contemporary black Olympians' disadvantages now. Yet Rudolph was coached, beginning in high school, by black Tennessee State Coach Ed Temple. Despite bellowing cries that there are no longer practical reasons for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's), Rudolph's ascent to the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Italy suggests otherwise. Ed Temple trained virtually every American sprinter for the 1960 Olympic games. Black athletes lived, trained and traveled together, as a distinct group away from white American Olympians.
The question must be raised why there is such resentment against blacks questioning the impact of being coached, groomed and taught by whites, particularly whites who are in not invested in the black political and economic struggles for humanity at all. It seems to be an American ethos (or pathos) for the strength and virility of the black body to be firmly and irreversibly groomed by the white mind. Black athletes were acutely aware of such duplicity, yet contemporary black athletes are groomed to speak around this pattern, not to it. White Americans appear less and less sane when they deny these realities in favor of their raceless delusions.
Perhaps the greatest black Olympian who saw through these dualities was Muhammed Ali. Recent homages to the Greatest of All Time in the wake of his death typically consisted of 'politically correct' Americans talking over visual images of Ali. When Ali is able to speak for himself, you hear the growth of a black Olympian who knew that is was his primary obligation to speak for his people who did not have the wealth, education, insights or courage to speak up for themselves or for the realities of living in a racist, duplicitous white society. Competing in the same 1960 Rome Olympics as Wilma Rudolph, it was Ali's Olympic experience that spurred a conversion towards black liberation politics and nationalism. Ali commented that prior to his conversion to black nationalism and the Nation of Islam, he was unable to truly pinpoint the damages he received from traditional and ineffective American political and religious values. But he did know instinctively that such themes and values did not affirm his humanity.
For some reason, Americans assume these issues of the black double consciousness are over. Although Muhammad Ali spoke this way in the 1970's, Americans apparently believe that some time between 1970-something and 2016, we became a raceless society. When did that happen? During Reaganomics? Maybe it was when President Barack Obama was called a "boy" by a white congressman in 2010. Despite the reality that most white Americans have done less than nothing within their own communities to combat systemic and damaging white perceptions about and towards black Americans, they feel confident that white coaches, institutions and teammates deliver healthy environments for black athletes to live and train in. Despite the fact that low-income black families have to shuttle aspiring black Olympians to white homes to this day, for some reason does not communicate the same challenges that thwarted Emancipation and integration from addressing racial animosities and inequities.
In speaking of USA athletes’ waning ability to speak to the black community when prompted, special attention must be paid to USA Basketball. For if we are going to observe the comments and life circumstances of 4’8” black women, then we surely have to observe the patterns and behavior of 6’6”, 6’10”and 7 feet tall black men.
USA Basketball collects the most marketable, popular, talented and powerful black athletes in the world as a direct show of American athletic and moral superiority. Not only expected to win, USA Basketball players are expected to make other teams feel as if they never knew what a basketball was, much less skillfully place said ball within the netting of a suspended goal. Overwhelmingly, USA Basketball is synonymous with black men. But not just run-of-the-mill black men like the cast of Fat Albert, USA Basketball comprises the wealithiest, most visible and influential black men alive. More so than any other group, USA Men’s Basketball teams are a cross-section of the black aristocracy. Their impact is so universally felt, that institutions and individuals within black communities who promote positive solutions for black men to protect and provide for black communities, often feel they compete against the shadows cast by these giants. Not to mention, come the Olympics, their popularity soars higher than the B-1 stealth bomber.
Despite such popularity, USA Basketball players, like Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, refuse nearly every opportunity to speak to the black-double consciousness or live visible lives of black pride and solidarity. More so than any other group, black USA Basketball players cash in on the “cache” of being respectable, and exemplary Americans without any obligations to be leaders for their own communities.
But nearly all black USA Basketball players are men integrated into spaces where other blacks, particularly other black men, are not authority figures or even prevalent ones. During crucial late adolescence and early adulthood, ages 17-24, these men are groomed and gain initial notoriety and accomplishment under the near universal tutelage of white men. The USA Basketball head coach has remained white throughout time. And after watching halftime after halftime story from 30 years of being a sports fan, I can recite story after story of the abject beginnings of black male athletes. Poverty, domestic violence, street violence encompasses nearly each biography, only for the young black man to “have made it” by gaining admission into a NCAA Division I college basketball program. Michael Jordan went to North Carolina coached by Dean Smith. Magic Johnson attended Michigan State coached by George Melvin Heathcoat. Carmelo Anthony attend Syracuse University coached by Jim Boehim. These players also won ‘national’ championships in college before participation on USA Olympic teams. The list goes on and on and most Americans understand this racialized pattern as the general norm.
What is also interesting in these interviews is when black players describe coaches as father figures. The symbolism of black men having white 'father figures' cannot be overstated in the instances in which these players then are asked questions of blackness. These multi-millionaires, who at best have developmental dualities in speaking for black America, are the most sought-after spokespeople for black America in times of triumph or crisis.
Michael Jordan, in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, draped the American flag over his Reebok jumpsuit to protect the image of his personal endorser, Nike. Jordan could alter his image to protect a client, yet when "his Airness" was asked to support local and national candidates that represent agenda items for black communities in North Carolina and beyond, Jordan flat stated that he couldn’t do it because “Republicans buy shoes too.” Charles Barkley, whose rough and tumble play plus blatant outspokenness, gave him an edge as a player used that edge to proclaim to the United States of America that he was “not a role model” for a 1993 Nike commercial.
In effect, when the top layers of black manhood refuse to establish practical and affirming mores and values, it does not result in a trickle-down, but a gushing downpour of duplicity and danger for the solidarity and unity of black communities. But the duplicity of the black aristocracy is not new. It is an identical twin to the black double consciousness itself. In talking about the black aristocracy back in 1899 W.E.B. DuBois noted
. . . .in general its members are curiously hampered by the fact that, being shut off from the world about them, they are the aristocracy of their own people, with all the responsibilities of an aristocracy, and yet they, on the one hand, are not prepared for this role, and their own masses are not used to looking to them for leadership. As a class, they feel strongly the centrifugal forces of class repulsion.
. . . .Consequently this class which ought to lead, refuses to head any race movement on the plea that they draw the very color line against which they protest.
Only a couple weeks prior to these Rio Olympics, four current and former USA Basketball players gave what some consider a passionate call for unity in a time of crisis. Although gaining mass publicity and appeal for sound bites and tweets, it was hard to see concrete institutional or structural steps any of these wealthy men took to actualize high-minded appeals for peace, community and Justice.
Residing in a male-dominated, Euro-American society demands that the psychology of black men communicate the interests and values of their community, particularly when asked by media sources. Taking such a platform is a fundamental step towards that community protecting itself and providing the institutions required to successfully replicate its way of life generation after generation. It is almost a given that status quo black male culture, as demonstrated by USA Men's Basketball, at best is inconsistent in playing this role, and at worst, black masculinity has been conditioned to actively oppose the health and stability of black communities.
The lame-duck appeals for black communities to stop the violence in the wake of America's latest reminders of its racism is so emblematic of black duality. Almost as if joined at the hip, USA Basketball players like Carmelo Anthony and LeBron James cannot make the slightest statement that America's institutions are racist to the core without also mentioning black on black crime. We all get the silly translation that this duplicity communicates to the general American public and black communities specifically.
"Yes America kills you. But you also kill yourself so that really makes us even. Want us to stop killing you? Then stop killing yourself first."
Here we get the steady dose that it is always that black community's fault and that the black community must heal itself thoroughly and completely before America could even address its institutional repression. Typical. This reasoning is the foundation of the double-consciousness itself and also helps explain black athletes' declining ability to represent their own communities on the international stage. Black athletes, employed and enriched by traditional white institutions and competing for a majority white nation, still are the ones empowered to issue a public, conditional compromise to end state sanctioned murder against black Americans.
The "melting pot" may be a traditional American fallacy, disseminating the perception that America melts a person's past identity into the generic American one. Yet when the Mercury News performed their Olympic recap, distinct racial differences made headlines. Black athletes, in turn, when delivering messages on race, cannot speak in such a debilitating, raceless fashion. Racial categories, and their connotations still define American thought. The Mercury News did not melt Manuel's black identity into the traditional American narrative. She is not an "individual" the way Mr. Everything Michael Phelps is portrayed in the Olympic recap. She is an African-American. So if our collectivity is and will forever be thrust upon us, can it please be used for our benefit? If not, come next Olympics, I won't have anyone to root for.
Comments