The Worth of Platforms to America’s Black Athletes and Activists
Do White-owned platforms and institutions really provide opportunities to challenge America’s White supremacy?
Black people and especially Black women can’t catch a break. Just in the past week, the IOC banned alternative swim caps to protect Black women athletes’ hair. The US Anti-Doping Agency handed down its heartless 30-day suspension and the IOC its 2021 Tokyo Olympics ban of sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson for recreational marijuana use, days after her birth mother died. Then came revelations of ESPN’s Rachel Nichols and LeBron James’ social justice partner Adam Mendelsohn, caught in a hot-mic-and-camera racism moment directed toward colleague Maria Taylor.
All this is occurring inside the same institutions in which Black athletes have become activists, adding the weight of their platforms and profiles to Black Lives Matter and other social justice endeavors. All this activism is meant to stem the tide of state-sanctioned maimings and murders, of rape and sexual assault, between mass criminalization, mass incarceration, and police lethality. But It is maddeningly obvious that “the beat goes on, the beat goes on, the beat goes on” in Black lives not mattering at all. How can Black activists and activist-athletes expect lasting change…
