No Safe Space for Black Women Globally: Brittney Griner & Russia’s Anti-Blackness & Anti-American Ruling
The guilty judgment against Brittney Griner, WNBA Basketball player, cements the reality of anti-blackness as a global phenomenon (https://apple.news/ATrcxXgVfQwWpzN3hUZU1uQ). It is also a commentary on the state-of-affairs of American-Russian diplomatic relations.
Had Brittney been a “blondie”, would the United States have acted sooner to rescue her? We have witnessed time and again the quickness with which the public responds when white women are in distress, and how Black women are simply not viewed as being vulnerable, so a lot of foot dragging occurs when we are in trouble.
How is it that the U.S. also hitched the release of another imprisoned American, Paul Whelan accused of espionage, whose charges are far more serious, to negotiations for Brittney? Whelan was already left behind once (https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/paul-whelan-left-behind-statement/index.html) because the U.S. did not include him in a 2019 prisoner exchange that brought Trevor Reed home (https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/politics/trevor-reed-russia/index.html)? Doesn’t attaching him to Brittney as a condition of her release complicate the possibilities for her?
Griner’s so-called crime of “…trying to smuggle less than 1 gram of cannabis oil in her luggage” is ludicrous. Her sentence of 9 years for an offense her Russian lawyers say usually carries 5 years and a suspended sentence proves Brittney is little more than the victim of political retaliation.
And where was the NBA in this when it first hit the news (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/sports/basketball/nba-brittney-griner-russia.html)? Why didn’t it mobilize their macho resources and global athletic clout to assist a sister basketball player?
They have added their support now(https://www.nba.com/news/wnba-and-nba-statement-regarding-brittney-griner), but it wasn’t immediate, and they haven’t tried “basketball diplomacy” — I mean, where is crazy Dennis Rodman when you need him?
The only reason Brittney has played Russian basketball for the last 7 years is because of gendered pay inequities in American sports, for which the NBA and NFL and major league baseball teams are complicit.
Shame on us, shame on US gender inequality in sports, shame on American athletics! We decry disparate practices abroad around multiple issues, yet perpetuate racial, gender, and sexual orientation discrimination and inequality at home.
While women (and some men), mostly Democrats, but a few Republicans as well, lobby to reinstate Roe v. Wade and women’s right to make their own decisions about their bodies and reproductive health, Americans should also turn our attention to implementing pay equity for women across all professions, including sports.
The NBA should mount a “Go Fund Me” page for Brittney; she will need both financial and emotional support whenever she comes home. Having financial stability for recovery is a necessity! And, it’s not like the professional NBA boyz club can’t afford it. They can, and then some. This is the top google snippet that popped up when I searched for “earnings of women athletes v. men”:
The average male NBA player earns $5.3 million a year, according to 2021–2022 data from Basketball Reference. Stars earn vastly more, such as Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, who make $45.7 million and $42 million a year, respectively. By comparison, WNBA players earn an average of $130,000 a year.
Women athletes in America earn far less than their male counterparts. Indeed, they also have less access to lucrative sponsorships.
The success of the U.S. women’s soccer team to gain “equal gender pay” (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gender-pay-gap-sports-soccer-tennis-basketball/ ) was a step in the right direction, but not all women’s professional sports have made the shift into a gender equity mindset and practice.
These unequal conditions of pay and contact with the justice system are negatively compounded when it comes to Black women — whether in sports or any other professions.
We are doubly scrutinized, critiqued, and penalized far more often than our white female counterparts in virtually any profession.
We all recall the treatment of GOAT tennis player Serena Williams argument with a referee at the French Open Cup. She was severely penalized such that white tennis stars publicly spoke out about their far worse behavior and nominal penalties (EDITORIAL: Violations given to Williams at the US Open illustrate a double standard | Editorials | Opinion | Daily Collegian | collegian.psu.edu).
For example, John McEnroe was notorious for his disruptive and disrespectful behavior towards tennis chair umpires, and more recently, former tennis player Andy Roddick tweeted this response about Serena’s treatment: ”…I’ve regrettably said worse and I’ve never gotten a game penalty.”
But this particular incident was not just about the gender inequality in how Black women athletes are treated. It is symptomatic of global anti-Blackness since Williams (and other international Black athletes) has faced virulent racism from umpires and fans (https://www.theroot.com/black-soccer-players-receive-racist-abuse-after-missing-1847272358 ).
On the financial side, Black women athletes are doubly excluded from the same earning privileges early in their careers (and even later on) as well as the sponsorship perks that we have come to associate with being a professional athlete.
Brittney’s professional career and personal life have now entered into a twilight zone while she becomes a pawn of American foreign policy and diplomacy, which is exacerbated by her Black skin.
As I ponder her situation, and send her wishes of hope and healing, I am struck by the fact that she may not have fared much better in the American judicial system!
According to a 2012 report by The Sentencing Project (Incarcerated Women and Girls | The Sentencing Project), while the incarceration rate of women and girls peaked at 475% between 1980 and 2000, it has since declined. However, it is still an extraordinarily high incarceration rate (https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/incarcerated-women-and-girls/).
Along the same lines, the incarceration rate for Black women has declined; however, the rate of Black women’s incarceration is still 1.7% higher than that of white women.
While Zackary Faria argues that “US Athletes Need to Understand the Growing Risks of Playing in Russia and China” (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/us-athletes-need-to-understand-the-growing-risk-of-playing-in-russia-and-china), what happened to Brittney in Russia should be a stronger cautionary tale about being a Black stranger in another country — especially authoritarian ones. There is no safe space, if you are Black, either in the United States or in other countries. Some artists and musicians have found refuge in Paris (e.g., Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Carolyn Fredericks), but for those born in France, who are immigrants, the reception is not so warm and friendly (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/assa-traore-black-lives-matter-france/2020/06/12/45c0f450-aa87-11ea-a43b-be9f6494a87d_story.html ).
There are advantages to being a Black visitor/ ex-patriate that garners some level of privilege; something I work about almost a decade ago (https://www.insightnews.com/news/local/artspeak-paris-noir-black-paris/article_1875d319-0144-5aa0-a3ad-63252a49b5e9.html ), and which still holds true to some extent.
Today, Black scholars like Dr. Trica Keaton (https://faculty-directory.dartmouth.edu/trica-keaton), a former University of Minnesota professor, now teaching at Dartmouth College, gives us insight about the reality of anti-blackness in France, based on her own experiences and over a decade of research.
Fluent in French, Dr. Keaton, in her book forthcoming from MIT Press in 2023 (https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/trica-keaton-38793/ ), entitled “#You Know You’re Black in France When,” lays bare the reality of
“everyday racism,” a phrase coined by Afro-Dutch scholar Philomena Essed in 1991 in her book “Understanding Everyday Racism” (https://sk.sagepub.com/books/understanding-everyday-racism-an-interdisciplinary-theory) on the same phenomenon in the Netherlands.
Keaton’s book will focus on what she calls “raceblind republicanism” and “…charts the troubling dynamics and continuities of antiblackness in French society.”
But to the matter at hand — when Brittney is back home and free, she may have her own stories of racism in Russia to add to our knowledge of how anti-blackness circulates as a global phenomenon.
Hopefully, what happened to her in Russia will motivate the other American women athletes (and men) who play overseas in general, and in Russia specifically, to stage some kind of demonstration in support of Brittney — take a knee, raise a fist, wear a black armband — something to show support.
This is an opportunity for the NBA (to flex its male financial muscles), use financial leverage, athletic capital or sports diplomacy to do the right thing and continue to pressure the U.S. government to use every diplomatic avenue to #freebrittneygriner.
As for the #haters who have said that Brittney deserves what she got because she knowingly brought in illegal drugs, who also then bring up some domestic conflicts between she and her wife, as if that justifies a 9 ½ year sentence, I would ask, where were you when male athletes were accused of domestic conflicts/violence, where were you when male athletes have been forgiven for doping?
Whatever has happened in Brittney’s life outside of her playing basketball has nothing to do with her sentencing for this violation of Russian law. Also, the sentence seems to be overly zealous for the amount of cannabis oil that she had in her possession — this is a person who has traveled back and forth to Russia playing for them for 10 years — where is the leniency for never having any violations in the past?
It is clear that Brittney is a scapegoat for Russian anti-American politics.
Now let’s see how America responds.
The media reports negotiations for Griner’s release via a prisoner exchange is happening; let’s hope it’s in the works.
And then, let’s talk about #reparations for Brittney! It is a gendered bias sports environment that put her in this predicament.
She is owed something (from somebody) for the emotional and professional trauma suffered from both Russia and the US.
If there was equal gender pay for athletes (and all women), Brittney would never need to work in Russia!
We can only hope she gets the same care, and public support and equitable financial endorsements as Colin Kaepernick. Of course, as a male athlete who was well paid before taking the knee, Kaepernick probably had a lot more in financial reserves. Let’s hope Brittney will get some financial love and support, once she is free.
©2022 Irma McClaurin
Irma McClaurin is the Culture and Education Editor for Insight News, an award-winning writer, activist anthropology, and Fulbright Specialist. She is the founder of the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive at the University of Massachusetts; President of Irma McClaurin Solutions, a consulting business; past president of Shaw University; and a former Associate VP and the founding Executive Director of the first Urban Research and Outreach-Engagement Center (UROC) at University of Minnesota. Her book of essays, Justspeak: Reflections on Race, Culture & Politics in America, is forthcoming in 2022, with a foreword by Al McFarlane, publisher of Insight News.
