By Vivian Medithi
If you type “Rio Olympics” into your search engine of choice, one of the first auto-complete suggestions will include “disaster.” From the ever-increasing budget to the ultra-gentrification of Rio that has left thousands of low-income Brazilians, primarily black, homeless, and their favelas destroyed, even the run-up to the Olympics has been fraught with failure.
But as always, the worst of it has been watching American racism translate to a larger stage. The United States is a country founded on white supremacy, which still refuses to reckon with the truths of its past, present, and unfortunately, the foreseeable future. The Rio Olympics have served as a microcosm for American racism, highlighting the double standards white supremacy makes commonplace.
Gabby Douglas, the media darling in 2012, spent most of this year’s games under the weight of online abuse, whether for not having the proper stance during the Pledge of Allegiance or for not having the proper facial expression during her teammates’ floor routines. As in 2012, Douglas was also shamed for her hair this year. While scrutiny on the appearances of women versus their accomplishments are commonplace in sports, music, business, and essentially anywhere women exist, as a black woman, the scrutiny placed upon Douglas’s hair isn’t just sexist, it’s also racist, rooted in Eurocentric beauty standards that deem dreadlocks, afros, and other forms of curly and kinky hair unprofessional and unkempt.
It should go without saying Douglas doesn’t deserve any of this. She certainly doesn’t deserve the abuse, vitriol, and racial slurs that have been hurled at her for winning gold medals both as an individual and as a teammate in the past four years, regardless of the level of decorum you may expect from Olympic athletes. She hasn’t, for example, driven under the influence or smoked a certain medicinal herb, such as All-American hero Michael Phelps. Yet time and again, Douglas’ patriotism is called into question. By contrast, Hope Solo, who called the entire Swedish women’s soccer team cowards for beating her and is in the midst of a domestic-violence case for assaulting her half-sister and nephew, has never once been called un-American.
Another person who also hasn’t been called un-American is Ryan Lochte. However, in this instance, it makes sense. What’s more American than showing up in a foreign country, intentionally disrespecting native people, trashing other people’s belongings, then lying about it and skipping town? He’s essentially a 2016 Columbus. He should be a national embarrassment, yet the International Olympic Committee characterized Lochte and his teammates as “kids” we should “give … a break.” Lochte is 32; his teammates Jimmy Feigen, Jack Conger, and Gunnar Bentz, who were with him on the night of the nonexistent robbery, are 26, 21, and 20, respectively. Mike Brown was 18 when he was killed by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a little over two years ago; his videotaped behavior at a convenience store the day of his death was used as justification. According to wide swaths of the media, Brown wasn’t just a man but a thug. No media outlet is calling Lochte a thug; I wonder why.
America loves black athletes when they’re winning and entertaining us, but they hate them when they acknowledge their blackness. Simone Manuel was a national hero for winning gold; were people paying the same attention when she used her platform in Rio to speak out about racist police brutality in the United States? Would the U.S. love Simone Biles as they do now if she stopped winning? Or if she was competing under a different flag? When players in the WNBA dared to say #blacklivesmatter, players and teams were fined. Are they not supposed to acknowledge black humanity? Are they not allowed to speak their minds? Don’t answer that, we already know.
In 2012, the nation loved Douglas because America loves a winner, but America doesn’t hate her for losing; they turned on her for being black. The U.S. women’s soccer team failed to reach the Olympics quarterfinals despite winning the 2015 FIFA Cup. Did Solo or any of her teammates endure the same scrutiny and vitriol?
These double standards at the Olympics matter because they aren’t limited to Rio. A white man in Florida who killed a couple and was found eating their faces was called “a good kid” by the sheriff after the fact. Tamir Rice was 12 years old when two cops killed him in a split-second drive-by shooting for having a BB gun; in court, his height was used to paint him as somehow adult, as though 12 isn’t so painfully young discussing this should make anyone with a conscience sick. Malia Obama’s behavior at this year’s Lollapalooza was placed under a microscope for twerking and possibly, but not certainly, smoking marijuana. Never mind that the Bush sisters openly did cocaine, partied underage and drunk at college, and once attempted to buy alcohol with their grandmother’s ID; the Obamas are the first family that need to do a better job parenting.
That double standard extends to University of Iowa. If you’re a new student here, I want to let you know that racism unequivocally exists on this campus, that there are double standards in place here. Statistically, because UI is overwhelmingly white, those double standards can get swallowed up in the numbers. But make no mistake, the scrutiny placed on people of color on campus, especially black students and faculty, is far higher than any white person on campus faces. We’re the only non-white face in most classrooms and suddenly become representative of our respective races to every white person in sight. My Muslim friends are scared to worship, to wear the hijab in public, to be who they are. Most of my white friends have fake IDs; every single person of color I’ve asked has said they don’t want one because they know if they get caught with one, there’s no chance they’ll get let off with a simple slap on the wrist. My black friends are unsafe anywhere they go, because the police are an instrument of white supremacy that can kill them with impunity in their homes, in public, for doing literally anything while black. If you don’t believe that last sentence, I would remind you that American police were started as a group of slave catchers and that more black people were killed by police in 2015 than were slain during the peak year of lynching.
And me? I’m openly queer and unabashedly brown. I get racism from gay men who say it’s “just a preference” (“no fats, no femmes, no darks” isn’t just a preference, boys) and white people asking me if they can call me “Slumdog Millionaire.” I can’t go through an airport without being terrified I’ll get stopped for nothing at all. The UI loves to tout its “diversity” statistics in brochures and admissions materials, but support for students of color on campus is nonexistent. We find ourselves turning to each other for support because we’ve learned from experience the university will only give us scraps, if anything at all.
The United States has a problem with racism. Yet two-thirds of white people will not talk about race on social media, despite the popularity of a racist presidential candidate continually spurring his supporters on to violence. 2016 has proven that America doesn’t care about people of color the way it does white people, through drone strikes and political inaction, through cultural biases and media silence. The Olympics might be over, but I think our nation deserves one last gold medal in racism and double standards. Congratulations USA; you deserve it.
