This is an anti-Blackness world, a world where the contributions of Africans and the African diaspora are erased, stolen or undervalued. This is doubly so for black women around the world and is quite evident in the way black female athletes are treated. Her achievements cannot be celebrated without hyper-criticism of her athletic flaws, or without broad criticism of her appearance or alleged lack of femininity.
The imprisonment of American basketball player Brittney Griner is a recent example. Her six-foot-nine frame, her queerness, and her Negrita already confronted her in an anti-black, anti-queer, and misogynistic world. As the WNBA’s all-time great, she was only making $250,000 a year, so she had to travel to Russia, where racism and homophobia abound, to play for a local basketball team for $1.5 million of additional dollars.
In February, just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities imprisoned her for using her as a political pawn in their conflict with the West, without regard for her physical, psychological or spiritual health. The U.S. has also not valued Griner as a person, missing scheduled phone calls and consulting with her infrequently. That President Joe Biden finally met with his wife, Cherelle Griner, in mid-September does not negate the lack of value placed on her mental health, career and life in the serious game of geopolitical posturing.
This is not just the problem of a uniquely talented black athlete. The misogyny faced by female athletes around the world devalues their achievements, the hardships they have experienced and the hard work they have put in to compete nationally and internationally.
I became aware of the underestimation of black women as athletes growing up in the 1980s. I didn’t learn about my mother’s time as a successful high school basketball player in Jim Crow Arkansas until I was almost 16 years old. “Yeah, Donald, I played,” he said nonchalantly during a call with his siblings and parents on Thanksgiving Day 1985.
However, he still wouldn’t know until he was 23 that she helped lead his team to the segregated state quarterfinals in 1965. He underestimated his 30-point score in some of those games, he underestimated the his team and underestimated the impact it would have had on me to learn that at age five or 13 as an athlete or as a black person.
My mother downplayed his athleticism and accomplishments as if they didn’t matter because, in a Jim Crow world of white racism and black patriarchy, for many, they didn’t matter. This lesson has stayed with me in the 37 years since I first learned about my mother’s athletic success and has framed how I think about the devaluation of black female athletes in all sports.
I remember how in the 1980s American commentators portrayed two-time US Open winner Tracy Austin as the blonde symbol of a quintessential tennis player who could do no wrong, another Chris Evert young, herself a so-called “girl next door.”
I also remember how at the same time, the same commentators only talked about Zina Garrison, a black American tennis player, in vague athletic terms, that her hamstrings and thighs were getting angry, and speculated about whether she could win at the she spins, being so muscular.
These criticisms came despite Garrison being ranked among the top 10 women’s tennis players in the world from 1983 to 1990, despite beating Evert, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf in their prime. The contrast in coverage between black and white tennis players in terms of appearance and competitive expectations bothered me.
Then came the 1990s, when Venus and Serena Williams conquered the court, dominating the sport for the next quarter century. But even with them, white women continued to be favored in media coverage. Despite cover stories in Vogue and Time magazines, Serena has never really peaked during her long and stratospheric career, in which she won 23 Grand Slam titles.
Venus has also never made it as an all-time great, with seven Grand Slam singles titles to her credit, including five Wimbledon victories. Together, they also have 14 Grand Slam doubles titles. That makes it a mind-boggling 44 titles combined across the four Grand Slam tournaments since the 1990s.
The criticism of her hairstyles and especially her pearl braids, Serena’s post-pregnancy catsuit, her “I mean, I’m just Serena” swagger, her on-court complaints about calls questionable referees, in their musculature have persisted throughout. years.
There have also been forever comparisons between Serena and all-time women’s champion (and homophobe) Margaret Court, even though more than half of Court’s 24 Grand Slam singles victories came before 1968, when considered skills for amateur players.
Then there are the Anna Kournikovas and Maria Sharapovas of sports who have received much more recognition (and modeling contracts) as young, relatively thin white women, despite their flaws and, in Kournikova’s case, a very limited to compete professionally.
When black women have failed to succeed in white-dominated sports or taken time to preserve their mental health, critics have been there to mock them. Garrison certainly faced a lot of criticism for her game and her thighs because she never won a single Grand Slam singles tournament and dealt with and struggled with bulimia for much of her career.
Former black Japanese tennis number one Naomi Osaka, with four Grand Slam singles titles to her credit, faced a barrage of criticism for her criticism at press conferences and her eventual withdrawal from the Open of France in 2021 due to his anxiety and depression.
In the US, conservative pundit Charlie Kirk called four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, arguably the greatest gymnast of all time, a “selfish sociopath” for pulling out of the Tokyo Olympics last year . She made the decision after losing control of herself in the air during a complex routine, which could have resulted in a terrible injury. This constant gas has slowed down these powerful athletes, perhaps even shortening their careers.
Many Black and African women have also faced institutionalized discrimination in the form of gender norms and high testosterone (high T) limits and bans in athletics. Recent science on this topic indicates that high T alone does not provide an athletic advantage to female, transgender, or intersex athletes.
Despite the evidence, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has insisted on excluding athletes with high T. If athletes with high T want to compete, especially in track and field, they should take hormone therapy to suppress their natural testosterone production. . Even the International Olympic Committee backed away from this position after the Tokyo Olympics, eventually ceding decisions to restrict the participation of high-level athletes to individual sports organizations.
The athletes most affected by these arbitrary distinctions are black and African women, such as intersex middle-distance runner Caster Semenya of South Africa, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the women’s 800 meters. She is banned from competing internationally unless she lowers her testosterone, a ruling Semenya has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
There are many others who face similar exclusion and discrimination, including Beatrice Masilingi, Christine Mboma, Francine Niyonsaba, Aminatou Seyni and Margaret Wambui.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, where Semenya won gold, Burundi’s Niyonsaba won silver and Kenyan Wambui won bronze in the 800m, Polish runner Joanna Jozwik, who finished fifth, said the real reason many Europeans support high-T bans.
“These fellows have a very high level of testosterone, similar to a man, that’s why they look the way they look and run like they run… I saw Melissa Bishop [from Canada] who was very disappointed… I think I should be the gold medalist… I’m happy to be the first European, the second white,” said Jozwik after the event.
To her and much of the world, black and African female athletes do not look or act like white, European women and deserve the trauma of extensive scrutiny over their testosterone levels. Even more than black men, black women are the scapegoats of a white-dominated world of unfair advantage.
It is within this global context that an athlete of Griner’s stature must suffer in a Russian prison cell for what is, at worst, a minor crime. And it is in this context that only now, on the brink of retirement, is the world outside of sport appreciating a quarter of a century of black female excellence from Serena and Venus. And it is this anti-black woman context that continues to limit femininity and femininity to heteronormative white and European girls and women and makes the international sports participation of all black women a precarious endeavor.
It is shameful and unacceptable that the world continues to devalue black female athletes and their humanity.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
