The Sad Golden Rule in Sports: White Can, BIPOC Can't

The continuous racial double standard in sports continues to rear its ugly head, and it's hit this year's Winter Olympics. I'm familiar to how harshly athletes of color are treated in comparison to white athletes. I've seen it in football constantly. Players such as Terrell Owens, Keyshawn Johnson, Chad Johnson, and many other Black players get lambasted for having a personality, for their celebrations, but it's OK if White athletes do it. I've seen Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski act up numerous times during games, but with White athletes, "They're passionate about the game." But when it comes to POC athletes, that's when the negative connotations come in:

"Arrogant"

"Diva"

"Absolute distraction to the game"

"Disgrace to the sport"

But that's another story. The recent show of racial double standards occurred when Kamila Valieva, a 15-year-old Russian figure skater, tested positive for a banned substance. I wasn't surprised at this; it's widely known that Russia has cheated in the Olympics for decades--in fact, it's why they've been competing as the ROC as of late. So I figured they'd throw the book at Valieva. How wrong we were. As it turned out, they are allowing her to compete, but if she happens to win a medal from this point on, there will be no coronation. Yeah, that'll show her.

Obviously, Sha'Carri Richardson came to mind when this happened, as last year, the American sprinter was banned for testing positive for marijuana. The whole thing screams "double standard," and it's immensely glaring. A young Black woman was harshly punished for smoking marijuana out-of-competition. Yet a young White woman tests positive for a harder drug and is allowed to compete. And as we remember, Richardson stated that she was coping with the recent loss of her mother, but the IOC didn't want to hear that. Which brings up another racial double standard: mental health and coping.

I take mental health very seriously. We are all human beings, and we try our best to be as centered as possible, but it's not easy. So when one of us has struggles, we should all show support. The thing is, even that appears to be racially divisive. Let me just say this: if you are BIPOC, and you utter the words "mental" and "health" in the same sentence, good luck to you. You will be hit with a hailstorm of tone-deaf labels and narcissistic guilt shaming. Just ask Simone Biles. This woman dominated gymnastics for so long, winning gold medal after gold medal after gold medal, and in last year's games, Biles mentioned that she was mentally exhausted and was taking a break from competition. She got immensely shamed in response, with many calling Biles a "quitter," and using Kerri Strug's 1996 gold medal performance through injury as their pathetic excuse to consider Biles "weak."

You know, I don't know if it's because I'm young (born in 1985, when racial progression was continuing to grow) compared to my parents' generation, which has experienced hardcore racism, but it just never ceases to amaze me how the struggles of Black people and other POCs are just pushed aside and dismissed in comparison to when White people have the same mental health issues. Oh, and regarding Kerri Strug? She voiced her support for Biles on social media, because she is understanding and knows how taxing their profession is.

The bottom line is this: the glaring differences between how Sha'Carri Richardson and Kamila Valieva were handled? Just another example of the growing bias against athletes of color. Even worse than this bias is the lack of recognition of that; the immense tone-deafness, the toxic belief that BIPOCs are making excuses when it comes to our issues. The IOC really needs to make it up to Sha'Carri Richardson, and regarding the problems like this in sports overall, we need to do a better job recognizing double standards like this and not just ignore them.