The Athlete’s Voice

This past week has been a remarkable one in sports. An active NFL player came out as gay. A superstar gymnast took the penultimate step toward becoming the greatest of all time in her sport by competing to honor of and to remind the world, including her own national governing body, of her teammates who survived abuse at the hands of Dr. Larry Nasser. A female hammer thrower, who has used her platform to speak out on Race, turned away from the national anthem which played while she was on the podium at Olympic Trials.

There will be those draw differing conclusions from each of these athletes and their use of their voice or platform and the ways in which they did so, praising one or condemning another. But what is clear in Las Vegas Raiders’ Defensive End Carl Nassib coming out, matter of factly in a video, as part of Pride Month; Simone Biles coming back to the Olympics in part to pressure the establishment of her sport for better treatment of young athletes and protection from abuse; and outspoken civil rights activist and hammer thrower Gwen Berry draping a tee-shirt emblazoned with the words “Activist Athlete” over her head during the playing of the national anthem at the U.S. Track & Field Trials, is that athletes have a voice that cannot, and should not, be silenced even if we don’t always all agree how it is used.

Sport was a cauldron for activism in the 1960s and 70s, reflecting the turbulence of society and the press for greater equality, or at very least recognition, by individuals who had previously been excluded. But that cauldron cooled from the 1980s onward as athletes, empowered by the sacrifices and activism of that earlier era, focused on mainly on reaping the economic rewards created by the prior generation’s battles by building their brands.

The “most equal athlete” under this analysis was the one who could make the journey from the playing field to the executive suite, closing the economic gap between worker and owner. This led to some careful, canny, and decidedly non-controversial figures becoming the prototype: Michael Jordan who declined to speak out politically because people from both sides of the political spectrum bought his shoes; or Derek Jeter, who carved a path from the locker room for the owner’s suite, steadfastly avoiding controversy and maintaining the aura of being the consummate pro, are but two of the better-known examples of these brand first athletes.

But at its core, sport is always asking us to see. imagine, and reach for the next horizon, to seek a higher level of understanding in ourselves and of others. That horizon will change. It is what the horizon does, it moves. Several years ago, an “out” NFL player would have been revolutionary, except there have been active gay players in the league pretty much since its beginning. Similarly, a female Olympic sport athlete boldly and publicly campaigning for her sport to demonstrate greater care for her fellow competitors would have been equally unprecedented in the patriarchal structure that ruled Olympic sports.

In 1968, when a man named Avery Brundage ruled the International Olympic Committee and the US Amateur Sports hierarchy, he thought he would make examples of runners and medalists John Carlos and Tommie Smith for raising their fists in a “Black Power Salute,” on the medal stand in the Mexico City Olympics. Carlos and Smith were summarily sent home, banned from the Games and unquestionably suffered for their activism. But half a century later it is Brundage, who held virtually unlimited power in and around the Olympics, that has been consigned to the dustbin of a darker history and it is Smith and Carlos who are hailed for their courage and the image of their protest is the iconic one.

How history will view Gwen Berry and her anthem protest and activism is an open question. It has prompted both support and criticism and that perhaps is the point. She has used her voice, the one her athleticism provides, to shine a light on challenges in her home and nation about which she feels strongly. Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post wrote movingly of this today and the criticism Berry has drawn from Congressman Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL and wounded combat veteran, whose service to this nation is inarguably far greater than my own. Crenshaw has said “we don’t need any more activist-athletes.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2021/06/29/gwen-berry-dan-crenshaw/

On this, I’ll respectfully disagree. We need more athletes to show us the way to our better selves and point us toward that horizon, one that that makes an LGBTQ football player, nothing more curious than a respected teammate, and a crusading gymnast- a 4’8” inch Woman of Color who pulls from her small frame extraordinary power, to push us along on that journey.. We most certainly need more athletes who use their voice in authentic, occasionally challenging, ways.