Simone Biles of Team United States competes on vault during Women's Qualification on day two of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Gymnastics Centre on Sunday. | Laurence Griffiths/Getty ImagesErin Aubry Kaplan is a journalist in Los Angeles and a contributing opinion writer for theWhen superstar gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from team competition this past week at the Tokyo Olympics, citing emotional exhaustion that was hampering her ability to perform, the world gasped.
The fact it’s happening among Black athletes like Biles and tennis star Naomi Osaka is no accident. Admitting vulnerability was always anathema to Black Americans striving to win in all kinds of hostile environments, most vividly the fight for civil rights in the 1960s that required nonviolent protesters to remain impassive. But it was perhaps especially anathema to athletes striving to win, period — cross the finish line, put points on the scoreboard.
The officers appeared at moments to be at wit’s end — a place Black people are supposed to avoid at all costs. Distress is what Black people are never supposed to acknowledge, either to the world or to themselves, even though distress, discouragement and despair come with the territory of being Black in America. For that reason, not displaying or succumbing to such feelings has long been a key part of racial struggle.
Of course, that message was entirely lost on her conservative critics, chiefly white men like Charlie Kirk and Piers Morgan. Kirk trashed Biles as a “national embarrassment,” while Morgan said she “let down [her] country.” Aaron Reitz, Texas’ deputy attorney general, declared her a “national embarrassment.
I don't follow gymnastics. I don't pretend to know the full extent of what it means to be black. But I do know that this athlete did what was right for her health & the health of the sport. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to stop, take stock, and live to see another day.
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