Caster Semenya was ready to go
there as an 18-year-old, willing to be humiliated in front of adults if that’s
what it took.
The South African track star was
prepared to remove her underwear to satisfy athletics officials’ questions
about her sex. “They thought I had a dick probably,” Semenya
said Tuesday on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” Whatever. She told
them, “’It’s fine. I’m a female. I don’t care. If you want to see I’m a woman,
I will show you my vagina. Alright?’”
Making the proposal was degrading enough.
But Semenya, now 31, suffered worse emotional trauma in learning that such offers
are worthless. Officials have decided she’s a male based on hormone levels,
regardless of her body’s genitalia. The eye test means nothing if lab tests
determine the final result.
Semenya was a teenager from a
rural village in 2009 when she gained international prominence for her very
essence. She wasn’t cast into the
spotlight just because her appearance is more masculine than traditional femininity.
Semenya became a controversial figure because her leaked sex-verification tests
reportedly revealed that she had three times the amount of testosterone
typically found in an average woman.
She was identified as female at birth and has identified as such her whole life. Semenya continues to face unnecessary, unfortunate, and uncomfortable queries about her body. Plenty of Black females don’t have her condition, hyperandrogenism, but they can relate to the scrutiny and criticism of her God-given form.
Getting hot over mass shootings, trigger-happy
cops, environmental injustice, maternal mortality rates, voter suppression, unfair
hiring practices, redlining, and other systemic burdens, doesn’t leave much
energy for petty racism like name-calling.
If fair treatment in
life-and-death issues meant accepting verbal abuse, I’d listen. But we know
life doesn’t work that way. Letting white folks talk to you wild makes them think
other forms of abuse are OK, too. The cycle is older than dirt and faithful as
sunrise: Words lead to thoughts, which lead to actions, which leads to us
catching hell.
During Saturday’s game against the
Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson told us he’s racist
without saying the N-word. He thought he was slick, calling shortstop Tim
Anderson out his name by referencing the patron saint of Black ballplayers, stirring
emotions that sparked a near-brawl later in the game.
“He was trying to call me Jackie
Robinson, like ‘What’s up, Jackie?’ I don’t play like that,” Anderson
told reporters after the game. “I wasn’t really bothering nobody today, but
he made the comment and it was disrespectful.”
We didn’t hear Donaldson’s tone or inflection, but Anderson didn’t hear a compliment and neither did I. It was a condescending reminder that Anderson is “other,” a Black man in a white man’s game. He’s among the latest to feel it and Robinson was first, when he broke the major league color line in 1947.
Thanks to Michael Jordan and the flyest race car ever, NASCAR just hit for a lick.
The sport that wants more cool points and wider swaths of fans just achieved both goals, with props to Air Jordan and the internationally iconic logo. Though Jordan has struggled mightily as an NBA owner in Charlotte, his motorsports shine is blinding after last Sunday’s race in Kansas.
The Hornets have reached the
playoffs twice in his 11 seasons as owner. His NASCAR team – 23XI Racing (pronounced
twenty-three eleven) – has reached victory lane twice since he entered the
sport last year. The Jordan crossover broke ankles on the court; now it’s
drawing eyes at the track. Driver Kurt Busch’s win came in the first race to feature
a Jordan Brand-ride, with Jumpman and Black Cement
all over.
“A lot of the reason we started
this race team is Michael felt like NASCAR was a platform that didn’t maybe
always understand his brand,” 23XI
Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin told reporters. “He thought this was a good
way to branch out the Jordan Brand.”
Nick Saban knows the business,
which explains him pulling
$9.9 million in base salary as Alabama’s head football coach. He knows the
game, too, reaching six of the last seven title games and winning three
championships.
He’s probably the sport’s goat among
coaches not named Eddie Robinson. Saban is certainly the de facto Godfather, the
public face of the most powerful outfit. He’s sat atop the organization long enough
to know when something’s fishy, like sportsbooks taking a flurry of crazy big bets.
There’s a sense the table has flipped and the smart money is moving to players,
most of them Black. He’s worried about Alabama losing its edge as the house.
Saban isn’t with this new normal,
where entities happily pay college athletes through name, image and likeness
deals (NIL). Players are no longer broke, which signals a clear and present threat
to the old worldview Saban represents.
During an event Wednesday
night with local business leaders in Birmingham, he went all-in against “buying”
incoming recruits with NIL money. “Jackson State paid a guy $1 million last
year to come to their school,” Saban said, rekindling refuted reports about Travis
Hunter Jr., the nation’s No. 1 prospect. “It was in the paper and they bragged
about it,” Saban said. “No one did anything about it.”
Jackson State coach Deion Sanders promised
in a tweet to “address
that LIE Coach Saban told.” Hunter wishes it was real. “I got A mil?” he tweeted.
“But my mom still stay in a 3 bed room house with five kids.”
Saban also had words for Texas
A&M and Miami, claiming they opened the vault and broke the code for securing
talent while he stays true to the amateurism sham. He bragged that only 25 players
got NIL hook-ups at Alabama last year, for a measly $3 million total. He called
that “doing it the right way.”
It’s the right way if you’re salty that players get anything.
There’s never been a better time for
young stars in the multibillion-dollar college sports industry. But this being
America 2022, we see efforts to turn back the clock.
A few years ago, financial
compensation for college athletes was illicit and strictly under the table. Today,
top players are paid in open-air transactions with a trail of authorized direct
deposits.
USC quarterback Caleb Williams is
conducting a
master class on getting bags, while high schoolers don’t have to wait. Five-star
shooting guard Jared McCain, a Duke-signee, is among several
prep stars stacking paper in California, a forerunner among states allowing
name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals for college athletes and recruits.
I figured this free market wouldn’t last long before the NCAA and associates – officials, coaches, and conference directors – pushed back. But barely three years? Reconstruction lasted a dozen. This ride just began, and haters already pumping the breaks.
No, we don’t all agree. The young adults – not kids – should have the right to earn as much as possible, just like their peers who don’t play sports. More than 100 years late, these newfound gains must stay and grow. Progress won’t erase the stain, but moving forward is the preferable direction.
The black-and-gold paint scheme immediately
caught my eye, like grandfathers’ fraternal bond in the Divine Nine. Even though
the school wasn’t HU-You Know, at least another HBCU was center stage in February
for one of the nation’s biggest sports events, the Daytona 500.
I typically pay the same attention
to that race, “The
Super Bowl of NASCAR,” as any other – roughly none. But when the NY Racing Team
rolled up in that sweet ride, with homages to Grambling State University emblazoned on
the hood and doors, looking away was impossible. Learning that team owner
John Cohen is a Grambling alum who played for legendary coach Eddie Robinson only
increased the intrigue.
That was three months ago, back before
I had ever watched a NASCAR race from beginning to end. Since then, I’ve taken the
sport for a spin and found it super cool. It’s also way Blacker than imagined,
leading to a new favorite Facebook group, deeper interest, growing knowledge,
and lingering disbelief.
“Hi. I’m Deron, and I’m a Black NASCAR fan.”
Shoutout to Cohen, who’s been in
the game since 2007. His ongoing partnership with HBCU League Pass has paid off
in national TV shine for Norfolk
State University, Florida
A&M University, Stillman
College, and Morehouse
College. “It’s a way to move the
needle on my team and highlight HBCUs,” Cohen said in a phone interview. “We’ve
gotten really good feedback and all the schools are getting a lot of press
now.”
I know a lot of Black folks haven’t rocked
with NASCAR, understandably so considering its history with good ol’
boys and the confederate flag. But bear with me. There’s reason to
reconsider.
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