Episode 161: Anti-Trans Athlete Rulings and Athlete Activism in the Wake of George Floyd
On this week's episode, Shireen, Amira, Lindsay, Brenda, and Jessica discuss the anti-trans athlete ruling in Connecticut [1:57]. After that, Finally, they speak about athlete activism in the wake of George Floyd's murder [11:00].
Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [51:00], the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment, starring all black women athletes in the fight to end police brutality [1:04:00], and what is good in our worlds [1:05:30].
Links
School Groups Want Flexibility On Special Ed Spending Due To COVID-19: https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/05/29/school-groups-want-flexibility-on-special-ed-spending-due-to-covid-19/28387/
Anti-Trans Laws Are Preventing Trans Women From Playing on Women’s Sports Teams: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/anti-trans-law-women-sports
ACLU PETITION: SUPPORT TRANS STUDENT ATHLETES: https://action.aclu.org/petition/support-trans-student-athletes
Trump Administration Tells Schools: Discriminate Against Trans Athletes or We’ll Defund You: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/betsy-devos-transgender-athletes-connecticut.html
Of Course There Are Protests. The State Is Failing Black People.: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/opinion/george-floyd-minneapolis.html
Transcript
Brenda: We’d like to take a moment to acknowledge and mourn the death of George Floyd of Minneapolis, Minnesota; a 46 year old father of two, and friend to many. He died while in police custody, May 25th, 2020, when Derek Chauvin forcefully kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes while Floyd begged for his life and echoed the pained and harrowing phrase Eric Garner also spoke before he died: “I can’t breathe.” This comes off the heels of many more targeted deaths of African Americans at the hands of the police, including Breonna Taylor in Louisville and, just two days after Floyd’s murder, Tony McDade, a Black trans man, was killed by police in Tallahassee, Florida. The protests that have erupted have come with more police violence and repression. We wanna send our sincere condolences to family and friends of George Floyd, to all of those grieving – especially in African American communities – to all of you: tired, worried, sad, horrified, angry and scared. We send you our energy and love to keep fighting the good fight.
Welcome to this week in Burn It All Down. I’m Brenda Elsey, associate professor of history at Hofstra University, and I’m joined by all of my beloved co-hosts: Shireen Ahmed, freelance writer and sports activist in Toronto, Canada, and ideologue of the toxic femininity charge; the brilliant Dr. Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State University; Jessica Luther, baker, PhD-er and author of Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back in Austin, Texas; and the unsinkable, whip-smart Lindsay Gibbs, sports reporter and founder of the amazing newsletter on women’s sports, Power Plays. On this week’s show we’ll discuss the anti-trans athlete ruling in Connecticut, and athlete activism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. On this show we’ve been following consistent attacks on the trans athlete communities, especially in schools, and this week there was an important ruling in Connecticut. Jessica, can you walk us through this?
Jessica: Sure, so the Education Department’s office for civil rights under Betsy DeVos has determined that allowing transgender girls to compete as girls violates Title IX. This is bullshit. But before we dig into that specifically, I want to remind everyone that Title IX is a federal statute that passed in 1972, and it says that the federal government will not fund any educational institution that discriminates based on sex. This is because equal access to education, including in sports, is a civil right in this country. Under Title IX the federal government, if it determines that an educational institution is discriminating based on sex, can withhold funding. In this case, DeVos’s Department of Ed has told the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the CIAC, and the Glastonbury School Board, that their policy allowing transgender athletes to compete in their actual gender category is discriminatory. Of course this is only about female athletes, because our entire idea of athletes is sexist.
I talked to Katie Barnes about this on episode 95; Katie said to me in that interview, “Culturally speaking, we have an unofficial hierarchy that we use to talk about athletes and it’s as follows: you have male athletes at the top, followed by average male athletes, followed by below average male athletes, and then elite female athletes.” There’s this assumption that any person who is assigned male at birth will be able to out-perform athletically any person who is assigned female at birth. So then of course because of this the focus is only on female athletes. The DoE found that Connecticut’s inclusive policy “denied female student athletes athletic benefits and opportunities, including advancing to the finals in events, higher-level competitions, awards, medals, recognition, and the possibility of greater visibility to colleges and other benefits.” This is bullshit, because the people who discriminate and do harm to female athletes are almost exclusively white cis men, and that’s where our energy should be directed, not at trans girls. We are talking about children. My evidence for this is: all of sports history.
This case was funded by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian organization. They filed complaints on behalf of three high school students, contending that trans students have an unfair advantage and that a trans girl winning a race over the other girls – which is not a given, by the way – would hurt these cis girls in their college recruiting and possible scholarship opportunities. I think what hurts their possible scholarship opportunities is actually the unequal money in collegiate sports and how it favors men’s sports, but I mean…Apparently none of that matters. The CIAC has 20 days to resolve the violation or else the DoE might suspend, terminate, or refuse to give funding to the Association and many of its school districts.
The last thing I’ll say is that Katie did a great piece in 2018 for ESPN titled, They are the champions: in the face of fear and anger, two young transgender athletes fight to compete in the sports they love. Katie interviewed the executive director of the CIAC who told them, “Our association is in a place where we don’t look at fairness in terms of winning and losing. It’s more about opportunity and access. We want to be fair there first. It’s not easy to be a high school student to begin with, growing up is tough. To be a transgender adolescent is an extra challenge. This is about life, not winning and losing in sports. If we could all be more supportive, that’s far more important. I’m not surprised that DeVos’s Department of Ed doesn’t view transgender participation in the same way as the CIAC, but I’m pretty fucking angry about it.
Brenda: Oof. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah, thank you for that, Jess. I just wanted to say that I got to meet Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, the two trans girl runners who were at the heart of this lawsuit in Connecticut. I got to meet them at the Athlete Ally awards last November where they were honored. Something that sticks out to me that they said, beyond just their grace and beauty…They’re so much more poised than I was in high school. They were giving a big speech in front of Ali Krieger and Ashlyn Harris, and just were super chill about it. They said that this hate was mainly being fueled by the parents of their competitors, not the competitors themselves. It just was a reminder to me about how much hate is learned and passed down. I’ve thought about that so many times since they told that to me. Now, I’m not saying that all of their classmates are angels or anything, but from the start their parents were the ones to tell them that this was wrong, their parents were the ones to really be leading this fight against Title IX.
Shireen: Yeah.
Lindsay: And now I’m sure some of their competitors have taken it up as their own but goodness, goodness, goodness, hate is taught.
Brenda: And I would just like to mention that while we’re in the midst of a global pandemic and there’s tons of austerity measures, the office of Betsy DeVos has also pursued doing things like calling for the “flexibility of spending” for disabilities and special education – meaning they can spend it in other ways. They’ve also organized different relief and aid packages to go to private schools, often right-wing Christian schools that are bigoted towards trans students in general, much less, you know, a whole series of other racist and homophobic educational curriculums. So, this is part of this much larger project. Shireen?
Shireen: Yeah, I just wanted to make a really quick point. Sort of along the lines of what Lindsay was saying was that, for me, it really pained me to see that two cishet young women are attacking two young trans women in what I perceived as a misguided attempt to advocate for girls in sport and using girls in sport as a shield for this type of transphobia. I mean, the internalized misogyny is terrible. It was hard because I think about a good place in the world, and I think about women being this collective that help each other and move along and that our struggles are so inherently connected. We know this at the intersections, we know that as people who talk about it within sport. It’s just very hard to see. I just wanted to quickly shout out Chase Strangio who’s been very public about fighting this and constantly tweeting about it and sharing that there’s a commitment to legally fight this decision.
Brenda: Amira?
Amira: Yeah, I would echo that point. I can’t remember when I burned it, but specifically the parents in Connecticut are awful in terms of the way that they’re using their kids as pawns. I just want to again constantly remind people that we’re talking about this in an athletic context obviously because that’s what we do, but also because that’s being used as one of the areas to legislate people out of existence, or attempt to. It’s the same with bathrooms. Bathrooms and tracks are being used as these sites to wage large-scale battles that are impacting the livelihoods, the very life and death matters that people in the trans community are facing.
So as we’re having this discussion, you heard Brenda at the top of the show lift up the name of Tony McDade who was killed in an “officer-involved shooting,” whatever they call it. He was a gemini, he was loving. His family said he had an infectious laugh and such joy. And he joins a long list of trans people who’ve been killed, particularly at the hands of police, but also just by general violence – disproportionately Black trans women but also, as we can see with Tony’s case, Black trans men and other trans people of color are disproportionately bearing the brunt and the weight of this violence. These legislations, these activities in bathrooms and in sports, are part of a much larger pandemic of a different kind, and I think that is why all of this is so important to get right because people are literally dying, and when you make laws to legislate people out of existence it makes it easier to dehumanize and perpetrate violence against these people.
Brenda: In the days following the death of George Floyd the United States has erupted in a protest movement that is part of a very long trajectory. We wanted to discuss some of the ways in which athletes have used their platform both leading up to this and during this moment. Shireen?
Shireen: Thank you, Brenda. Athlete activism was a relatively new quote unquote buzzword that started to appear more and more after Colin Kaepernick took a knee. But the reality is that Black athletes have been speaking out for a very long time. We’ve learned so much about this from our own beloved Dr. Davis, but it’s not only because of activism, which is in itself an incredible amount of work. It is literally protesting, speaking, writing, donating, using platforms to protest anti-Black violence, and specifically brutal police violence. Athletes have often been told that they’re entertainers, but that’s not what it is. Their bodies are literally used to make money for the white powerful men at the top, and just for a second we need to examine the term athlete-activist. That is critical, because no other marginalized group is forced to play and pray publicly for their humanity. So in that vein we’ve seen a few folks speak up, speak out. But what is needed is voices in small boardrooms and among decision-makers.
As UConn women’s basketball player Christyn Williams tweeted on Saturday, “As a Black collegiate athlete it’s concerning that I have not seen ANY universities use their platform on social media to post anything concerning the social justice that’s happening in America right now.” I mean, this is a situation where a young Black woman can’t focus on ball, can’t focus on training, because she’s thinking about the existence and the survival of Black people. I think that there’s a couple of things that have really moved me, moved in a harrowing way, particularly in sports media and Black journalists and Black folks out there and communities that are doing the work and doing more of the work.
I just wanted to actually say that I read something by my friend and friend of the show Musa Okwonga, he’s a sportswriter in the UK, and I’m just gonna take a little bit of what he said and share it with you. He was talking about doing an interview on this very subject, and he says, “The interview starts seemingly within the same minute it ends. I don’t get to say anything I want, but I don’t mind, because the most important thing is that my anger was clear when I said it. 20 minutes after the interview I’m still shivering gently as if I’ve stepped from a heated swimming pool in the late autumn air hoping I have either found the right words or the barely restrained emotion that it will need to encourage non-Black people to action. I hope I have found the appropriate package for Black suffering. The cost is too great if I and countless others have not.” Those words really hit me, and I thought about the emotion, physical and psychological toil, of athletes, sportswriters, and folks in all spaces – arts, science, business, academia. It’s fucking exhausting. In this segment we will talk about various things and athletes and ways to support, but the first thing I need to say is to non-Black folks, especially those who identify as people of color: pull the fuck up.
Brenda: So the first sort of segment of this segment, the sub-segment, has to do with a conversation we were having on Slack about how we think about these recent activities, protests, movements – connected to sports, but beyond them, too. Does this somehow feel different than the many many many other instances of protests against police brutality and its racist core? Lindsay.
Lindsay: I will say, as I was covering the athlete activism, especially from female athletes, very very closely back as a reporter in 2015 and 2016, and have since then. I will say, it used to be that every single statement deserved a little news story of its own because it was that big of a deal, do you know what I mean? Anyone who spoke out, it was rare enough for a little bit that that one statement would be newsworthy. I can just say that the volume this time…There’s too much to keep up with, which is a good thing. I think there are multiple reasons for that: the pandemic, the fact that we’re all home, the fact that we’re all watching, the fact that there are no distractions.
I think just the way the news worked this week with seeing the white power that Amy Cooper showed on Monday when she was yelling in that video, and then to have that concurrently put next to the death of George Floyd. I think the fact that the entire Floyd thing was caught on tape, the fact that it was just the brutality of it…All of these are brutal, obviously, but there wasn’t room in this conversation for the blame game that usually goes on in these conversations. The conversation cuts straight to a further point along than it had, in mainstream media at least, than it did quickly with Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin. I think the work that activists have been doing set us up to be farther along in that conversation too. But at the same time it feels like nothing has changed, that things are only getting worse. So…Yeah.
Brenda: Shireen.
Shireen: Yeah. I don’t think it’s progress, I think it’s undeniable, and I don’t think things have changed. I think that the level of systemic brutality is consistent. We’ve seen that, it’s been documented. And enragingly, the videos that were being shared – and for god’s sake, do NOT share videos and photographs of Black trauma, I cannot say that enough, do not do that – but it almost seems like the more that it’s shared the more people believe. Examine yourself, if you need to share that to literally prop up the idea that Black lives matter, something’s wrong with you. I’m not trying to be cynical. I live in a city that would protest…I live in Toronto, and just the other day Regis Korchinski-Paquet fell off a balcony in police presence, and they’re still investigating, and reporters can’t even report accurately because they’re just trying to be so careful. There’s friends of mine that are journalists that are so careful in what they’re trying to say because they don’t know everything yet, but there’s a death of a Black woman, and there’s questions, and there’s anger.
This is amidst everything, and also just to reiterate, up here in Canada it’s not like these systems of white supremacy do not exist. They have existed for a very long time in the same way. We don’t have the population numbers obviously, but it’s not as if this type of racism stops at the border. It’s literally embedded. Again, I don’t think I would say it was progress, because if there was progress we wouldn’t be doing this. I think I saw a tweet that not a day went by in 2019 that police didn’t kill somebody, there wasn’t a day in a month that it didn’t happen. I don’t know what kind of progress we’re looking for, but this just ain’t it.
Brenda: Amira.
Amira: Yeah. We saw Alton Sterling get choked out on camera and say the same damn words. This is not progress, it’s not even different. As long as the list of names is getting…Those are the names we know. Without video cameras, we’ve missed many others. There is an interest convergence that creates situations where it feels like a powder keg about to explode. I think Brenda gestured to some of these when we talked about the political climate and the various actors taking to the streets, there’s a lot happening here. But I think one of the ways you can take the temperature is that there’s so many brands and people who’ve come out with vague gesturing statements; Netflix straight up said “Black lives matter.” Nike, Oreo…When corporations can seize on something and say, “for once, don’t it,” “we can be the change,” etc, etc. When that one week when 45 insulted the league generally and all of a sudden everybody was kneeling – motherfucking Jerry Jones was kneeling, and people were like, “Oh my goodness, we’ve never seen this before, is this progress? Is this significant?” No. That was about ego. That was about money. It’s aligned briefly with a gesture that was about police brutality, but that’s not what it was about. That’s kind of what this reminded me of.
There’s something very real ruminating from city to city, and that is building on a historical movement that is always always always trying to march to a better day. But the responses of corporations and some athlete responses are good, and some are lukewarm, like those corporations. I think that that is a testament to the fact that the world is watching in a particular way, and there’s a certain type of performance in this moment that is brought out. But also for some people it is their awakening, and I think that’s what we have going on here. I don’t think it’s different, I don’t think it’s new. I think perhaps this is a different iteration.
Brenda: Those are great points. I think we want to also acknowledge and take stock of these athletes that have come out and used their platform. Lindsay, you wanna give us a little bit of a sense of what’s going on in the women’s sports community?
Lindsay: So, I think the best thing I can do and we can do is just lift up the voices. We just heard from Kelsey Bone and what she was saying in 2016 and in 2018. Once again we have a lot of Black female athletes who are leading the way here. Natasha Cloud had a phenomenal piece in The Players’ Tribune. She is a point guard for the Washington Mystics, I’ve covered her extensively over the past four years. She’s one of the best athletes to cover and to watch and to talk with. But I wanted to read a little bit from her piece in The Players’ Tribune, which is focused around white silence. She says, “But you know what crushes me most of all?? It’s how the systems of power in this country are built so strong, and with such prejudice, that in order for white supremacy to flourish — people don’t even have to actively be about white supremacy. They don’t have to carry the burden of being openly racist, or waste their energy on being loudly oppressive. It’s not like that at all. All they have to do is be silent.”
She goes on to say how much it meant to her to see Elena Delle Donne, her teammate and the WNBA’s MVP last year, post about the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter on Instagram. She said, “Even that one post on its own, it just took a little bit of the weight off my shoulders. It made me feel just a little less powerless in the world. It also laid down the gauntlet, I think, for other athletes. And if it didn’t, then I hope this article does. Because there’s no new information to wait for, there’s no other side to hear from. There’s no safe space, no neutral territory to chill in and sit these issues out. Athletes, if you’re reading this, know that we see you. I’ll repeat that: we see you. I love y’all, and like I said, I’m so proud to be one of y’all. But you’re being judged the same as everyone else, and if you’re silent you’re part of the problem. If you’re silent I don’t fuck with you, period, because I’m just out here trying to stay alive, and your knee is on my neck.”
Whew. Those are words I need to read on a daily basis, and hear, and let soak in. But she wasn’t the only one to deliver strong messages. We’ve seen teams and…We’ve seen it come from a lot of different spaces. Individual players…Saroya Tinker who was just drafted into the National Women’s Hockey League, one of the few Black players in the National Women’s Hockey League, she reached out and she gave a bunch of resources to her followers, anti-racism resources. She shouldn’t have to do that education but then she followed that up by posting a thread, a statement about her experience with racism in the hockey community, and she said that some of her former teammates lacked the understanding of the African American community and white supremacy, “and they often failed to recognize that the ideology underlying racist practices often include the idea that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different due to their social behavior and their capacities, as well as the idea that they can be ranked as inferior or superior. In this case I am and always will be inferior to my white teammates.”
So, I thought it was empowering to see this young player come out and address her teammates and her community so explicitly. It was good to see the National Women’s Hockey League Players Association sharing her statement and lifting up those resources and speaking in solidarity. We saw the players associations for the National Women’s Soccer League and the WNBA speak out as well. We have seen some coaches speak out, some better than others. I thought Brianna Turner, former Notre Dame player and current member of the Phoenix Mercury, she’s in her second year in the WNBA, she’s a must-follow for all of this. She said, “Recruits deciding what schools they want to attend: please be vigilant right now. See what coaches are speaking out now and what coaches aren’t. Think about if you would feel comfortable speaking about the current issues with your coach.” I think I’ve seen a lot of athletes putting the onus on coaches to establish a friendly environment. You’ve seen Dawn Staley out at protests this week, and this same week she landed two high-profile recruits. Of course those recruits had been in the work a long time, but I think it goes to show that this generation is looking at leadership…They’re holding leadership accountable in a different way, and that’s empowering.
I finally wanna just finish…There’s a billion more examples I could lift up, but I wanna share the statement that was just released from the UConn women’s basketball players, from all of them. It said, “We are nauseated by the social injustice and police brutality that is reoccurring towards the Black community. Yes, we kneel during the national anthem. Yes, we are rioting, and yes, we are protesting, because we are tired of innocent Black lives dying at the hands of police officers who do not care about our humanity. Those who are not Black: silence is the biggest betrayal right now. The hardest part is watching friends who are not of color not even question what is happening right now. It is time for us to start preaching togetherness, justice and love amongst one another. We are proud to be a team made up of diverse women who will never stop pushing for the most basic human rights for our people, standing up fighting for what we believe in, and bringing attention to these injustices is the only way that it will progress. As a team we are here, we are listening, we are woke. Black lives matter.”
Brenda: Jess?
Jessica: Yeah, there are so many athletes that we could highlight. I do want to mention that Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote an amazing op ed in the LA Times that came out yesterday, which was Saturday. I encourage people to read that. Here in Texas we had a lot of response, a lot from football, because football’s a big deal. As early as Tuesday, DeMarcus Lawrence, an outside linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys, was tweeting in all caps, “HOW CAN WE FEEL SAFE WHEN THOSE MEANT TO PROTECT US ARE KILLIN’ US? WHEN WILL MINORITIES BE FREE TO BE AMERICANS IN AMERICA?”
I really want to spotlight Kenny Stills, he is a wide receiver for the Houston Texans. He has been kneeling for a long time, he was kneeling back when he was a Dolphin, there was a whole brouhaha around the cops in Miami saying they weren’t gonna provide security anymore because of Kenny and some of his teammates still kneeling. On Wednesday, he tweeted a picture of himself in uniform, in the Texans uniform, kneeling on a sidelines with the words, “We must act for you and for all of those where no cameras are present.” And then Kenny did a thing yesterday – the NFL released a statement that managed not to mention anything specific about what was going on. It was so vague that they wrote “these systemic issues” without ever defining what “these” means. They didn’t mention race or racism, of course they didn’t mention Kaepernick. Stills responded directly to the NFL’s tweet of this statement with, “Save the bullshit.” I mean, we’ve heard from JJ Watt, which is kind of remarkable; all these UT football people.
I did want to shout out also Cynthia Cooper, the basketball legend. On Friday night she was downtown in Houston live-streaming to her Instagram followers the protest that she was participating in. Then the other thing I was gonna mention is that the Houston Chronicle did a sports cover for today on May 31st and it has an image of George Floyd, and they write this long thing that says, “Imagine if we had embraced Colin Kaepernick’s peaceful protest and paid attention to the issue he was trying to address. Imagine. We could be working towards change instead of witnessing the chaos, anger and violence in our streets. Imagine. Because this is exactly what Kaepernick was protesting – not the anthem, not the flag, not the military, but unchecked police brutality against people of color like George Floyd in our country. Imagine.” And then they have another image at the bottom that’s Kaepernick kneeling in uniform. It’s a full page, it’s very arresting, and I’m glad to see sports media talking about this. I’m sure some people remember that it was the owner of the Houston Texans, Bob McNair, who’s since died, who called…What was it…He called the NFL players, in response to the kneeling and Kaepernick, something about “We can’t let the prisoners take over the prison,” something like that. An incredibly racist thing.
I will say…I sent this to my friend Mobley, he’s a musician I’ve talked about before, and he pointed out to me that “we” is doing a lot of work here for the Houston Chronicle. They mean white people, they mean themselves, the Houston Chronicle’s media, without saying it. Mobley said to me last night, he said, “Obviously this is way better than the ordinary, but its deficiencies highlight how extreme the situation has to get before even the bare minimum gets done, which is depressing to put it mildly.” I’ve just been focusing a lot on what is here in Texas, and I do just want to mention very quickly that here in Austin there were huge protests yesterday, in part for George Floyd who’s from Houston, by the way, but also for Mike Ramos who was killed last week, I believe, I think it was about a week ago, by a cop in south Austin. So we have a long history here, not just in Austin but in Texas in general, around police violence. It’s very local.
Brenda: And I want to also mention that these athletes’ activism have really started conversations abroad and internationally. It’s been a very fascinating thing, and really exciting to see the ways in which they have an impact beyond the United States because imperialism, capitalism, racism…These are big systems that are not exclusive to the US. It’s been a couple of US players that have really – and not only US players – that have really come out. For example, the Schalke player Weston McKennie who also plays for the US men’s national soccer team, wore an armband and started a whole conversation in Germany. Maybe some of you remember that on this show we chose our own Bundesliga team and I believe it was Jess and I that got Borussia Mönchengladbach, and so today their player Marcus Thuram took a knee after he scored a goal. Just to remind us that this is history, embodying history, he is the son of Lilian Thotam who is an anti-racist activist within French football. It’s been really important that their work has sparked these important conversations beyond the United States as well. Shireen, some athletes have [Lindsay laughing] been active in the wrong ways. Do you wanna discuss that for a little bit?
Shireen: Yes, this part of the segment is called “WHAT NOT TO DO.” I think that, without making light of it, there’s moments that you just need to…That I’ve personally felt the need to, in addition to absolutely holding space for Black rage…People have been commenting in very humorous ways, and critiquing where it’s required. A couple of those places – not to point people out, but to specifically point people out! Darren Rovell, noted sports commentator, he literally only commented on the Twitter exchange between Nike and Adidas because Nike had tweeted something and then Adidas quote-tweeted them and then Nike quote-tweeted them, and it’s like, oh wow, racism is over because two of the biggest capitalist sports places have decided to quote-tweet each other! That’s the level of your insight? Okay, next.
I did want to talk about Josh Yohe who is a hockey writer in Pittsburgh, and this was a hat tip from Jashvina Shah. There’s a Mario Lemieux statue; Mario Lemieux is a famous Pittsburgh Pen, also of the famed team that did visit the White House. This statue was defaced, and so this man gets on to talk about how “riots” – or the protests, I don’t want to call them riots – the uprisings and the action is bad, because Mario Lemieux “was a nice man,” he was a nice man, and he “did a lot for” the Pens and the city of Pittsburgh. I don’t know how tone-deaf Josh is but I’m getting a pretty clear indication. The system around us is completely broken, people are angry, but this man’s worried about a statue! And let me tell you, the statue will be fine. It will be fine. It’s staggering to me. And also, just on that point, the Twitter account @dcolonizehockey actually put a thread out, because they’re just amazing, about how problematic Lemieux actually is. I say that to mean he’s got a history of rape apologia and just inaction. So he’s a nice man who does great things for white people. So sorry, that ain’t it.
I know that Brenda just quickly touched upon international…I would like to bring attention to Serbian footballer Sascha Bajin, who had a very interesting tweet. He was talking about how racism is a bad thing, but doing that thing, looking at it from the lens of a European. But his comments were really interesting and caught a lot of attention. The tweet, which is now deleted, what he actually said was, “We don’t look at color like this in Europe.” I just was like, what did this man say!? They don’t have racism in Europe? Pretty much every person I know in Europe who’s a person of color or BIPOC was like, what is he saying? I don’t know that Europe. What’s this Europe that doesn’t have racism? So in my astute articulateness I just replied back with a Bend It Like Beckham photo of Jess and Pinky staring, because that’s the only thing I could think to say. But that’s pretty much the commentary. Like, what are you saying!? It makes no sense. This also points to what needs to be done and how removed white privileged athletes are from this, that you can look out from Europe, which is literally the birthplace of colonialism, it’s literally the birthplace of this type of brutality. You’re saying there’s no racism, like, who do you hang with?
So in addition to that, which gave me moments of “literally, WHAT?” I wanted to talk a little bit closer to home. We’ve seen and we know that we look to, and I specifically look too – and this has been a place of progress for me – look to the US women’s national team for really intense beautiful things like Crystal Dunn’s Instagram. She’s been a warrior. She’s talked about Black is beautiful, she’s made incredibly clear, articulate comments, and just been very firm, and we look to her to lead. Sydney Leroux Dwyer shared this beautiful art by Shirien Damra who’s a Palestinian activist and artist, who has created images dedicated to George Floyd as well, and Sydney Leroux Dwyer shared that. Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn, Pinoe has been on her Instagram. Alex Morgan and Becky Sauerbrunn have had two very specific tweets; Becky Sauerbrunn’s was about what kind of action to do and where you can do action, because there are honestly some people that don’t know what to do. This is, unfortunately, new for them. But people have their journeys so she’s pointing them to the right direction, you know?
We’ve seen Winston McKinnie, we’ve seen Jozy Altidore. Okay, but let’s stop for a second – let’s talk about Carli Lloyd, who tweeted out some nonsense, okay? She tweeted out some nonsense, and this is really not what to do. She tweeted out that stock photo of everyone’s different pigmented colored hands, holding hands, saying “We’re all humanity.” NO, CARLI. It’s not time for the hand-holding. It’s not time for that. You can’t fucking say “Black lives matter,” you don’t gotta say anything. And your silence is enough. So then Carli got upset because Carli’s white fragility wouldn’t allow her to take any type of criticism, right? So Carli gets mad, and Carli then tweets out, “I’m not racist, I’m not a racist,” but she does the checklist of, “Do I have Black friends? I have Black friends. I’m not racist. I’m not privileged.” I can’t think of anyone on the athlete scale that is as privileged as you are! You literally tweeted about getting a free Volvo, like, two months ago, at the beginning of the pandemic. So yeah, let’s just relax with that.
Anyway, I replied to her and just said, “Yeah, no.” and I was promptly blocked. So if this is the type of engagement…And my comment was literally “Yeah, no.” Apparently it’s a prestigious club to be part of the ‘I’ve been blocked by Carli Lloyd club.’ I think we might do t-shirts. Because she has, for those of you that know her, she was critical as well of Pinoe when Pinoe took a knee, and not supportive. So this is no surprise to a lot of us, but I didn’t realize the club…And somebody from the Riveters, the Rose City Riveters – I love you, Portland – was like, most of our supporters club has been blocked by Carli Lloyd as well. So that’s just literally not what to do, so if you want prime examples go look at what they have done, if you can find them because they’ve since deleted a lot of these tweets, but screenshots are forever, bitches. [Lindsay laughs]
Brenda: It’s the only time Carli’s blocked. [laughter]
Amira: And also somebody said, oh, she’ll fit right in when she does her NFL career!
Lindsay: She’s the perfect NFL kicker. [laughing]
Amira: Oh god, she’s perfect for that. Ay ay ay, what a mess she is, what a mess. If homegirl had a bingo card…If you had a bingo card for all the things white people say when they’re called out, it’s actually quite a mastery to use such little characters to check off so many boxes. Anyways, I just wanted to say, if you’re listening to this and you are a white person or a non-Black person and you’re uncomfortable talking about race, sit in that uncomfort, sit in that discomfort, please. Do not use not knowing what to say as an excuse for your silence. Silence is complicity. You cannot be silently anti-racist, you have to be actively and vocally anti-racist. And now let me tell you, there’s a lot of people who take their care and their time and their labor to offer up education, that have a patience, that have book recommendations and podcast recommendations – Google it. There’s lists, there’s posts circulating on Instagram, there’s threads on Twitter…Literally anywhere you want you can go and do this.
Also know that there’s a lot of us who are tired of educating, so don’t put that burden on the Black people in your life or that you think you’re friends with or whatever, don’t. But when people are inviting you to educate yourself, please take those invitations. Google is your friend. Libraries are free and wonderful places. If you don’t feel comfortable going to a protest: DONATE. Donate your money. Use your platforms. Vet where you’re sending your money – don’t give it to Shaun King, thanks, please don’t. Google that for years of exposés. But I feel too often what happens is people say, “I feel deeply about this, I’m scared, I don’t know what to say.” And I get that, but that can’t be your excuse any longer. You have to just try. And there’ll be moments where you’re called out, and instead of retreating back or getting defensive or getting mad, you lean into the discomfort and you keep going. That is literally the only way to do this work. This is me inviting you all to do that work. My patience is worn out, so don’t come to me for much. [laughs] But please do the work.
Brenda: Jessica?
Jessica: Yeah, I did want to mention that I think it’s important that we bring COVID back into this discussion; that’s something that we’ve covered extensively over the last few months. There’s something here that we should touch on about the connection between these COVID respiratory deaths that are impacting Black and brown communities at a much higher rate than white communities in the US. The fact that Floyd was choked, that that police officer had his knee on that man’s neck, and that the response of the police to the people protesting that death in this moment is to spray them with poison, tear gas, affecting their respiratory systems. All of that are outcomes, right, of state neglect and violence.
There’s an amazing op ed at the New York Times by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, it’s called Of course there are protests, the state is failing Black people. In it, Taylor writes, “The fact that Mr. Floyd was even arrested, let alone killed for the inconsequential “crime” of forgery amid a pandemic that has taken the life of 1 out of every 2000 African Americans is a chilling affirmation that Black lives still do not matter in the United States. This spring season has bloomed at least 23,000 COVID-19-related deaths in Black America. The coronavirus has scythed its way through Black communities, highlighting and accelerating the ingrained social inequities that have made African Americans the most vulnerable to the disease. As mostly white public officials try to get things back to normal as fast as possible,” and I think I just wanna pause and say that that’s a lot of sports owners and people who control these leagues and all of that that falls under that, right? “As mostly white public officials try to get things back to normal as fast as possible, the discussions about the pandemic’s devastating consequences to Black people melt into the background. Consequences which become accepted as a new normal we will have to live or die with. If there were ever questions about whether poor and working class African Americans were disposable, there can be none now. It’s clear that state violence is not solely the preserve of the police.”
Brenda: Amira?
Amira: Yeah, the COVID point is so important because it’s the layering of atrocities right now. They’re using tear gas on protesters in the middle of a pandemic that’s a respiratory pandemic. It’s terrifying, quite honestly, to see. I wanna shout out people like Karl-Anthony Towns who lost his mother to COVID and is still on the frontlines. I just wanted to invite all of us to think about this beyond sports, to think about the world we inhabit, especially as we watch the basic-ass discourse around the uprisings that are currently taking place in many parts of this country. We are on a podcast with the name Burn It All Down. We call you flamethrowers and we talk about that metaphorically, about laying raze to a system built on inequities. Don’t look away from the actual fire. When people are talking about this and say, “Well, I could support this kind of protester,” or “I was fine with Kap but I’m uncomfortable because the CVS is on fire.” Property, capitalism, these places will never be more important than lives.
Obviously you’ll see a lot of memes with quotes from Martin Luther King going around because that’s a thing that happens, and they are pulling out, at least, when he says, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” If you read that entire text, one of the things he says is, “What has America failed to hear?” He talks about the widening income gap, that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. He says, “It has failed to hear that large segments of the white society are more concentrated about tranquility and status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. In a real sense, our nation’s summers of riot are caused by our nation’s winter of delay.” I think that those words are so powerful, and they resonate, and there’s many others that we can look to that have been said time and time again. Toni Morrison said, “People who keep saying, Oh, the riots! – What struck me the most about those who rioted was how long they waited, their restraint. Not the spontaneity, the restraint. They waited for justice and it didn’t come.”
In 1968 as riots, uprisings, and rebellions took across the country, ’68 and ’69, they released a Kerner Report to talk about the origins of them. That report, released more than 50 years ago, could be read today and still apply. That report says, hey, sanitation, jobs, hunger. They are hungry in Newark. They are hungry in LA. We can say they’re hungry in Minneapolis. So yes, things are on fire. Don’t turn away from that. When we say “burn it all down” and you can hear that with comfort, don’t find discomfort when things are actually being burned the fuck down. It shouldn’t take that to take notice, but here the hell we are. So believe me when I say this with all sincerity: BURN IT DOWN. Burn it all down. I invite you to sit in that discomfort, to stare at that fire, to not turn away.
It’s very hard to deal with this discourse, some of it that I see going around. Don’t be mad at looting when we’re occupying stolen land. Don’t get mad at stealing. This is also an assault on capital. The banks during COVID have gotten richer. That is stealing. The rich continue to stock that up on the backs of many of us, and really bearing the brunt of that is Black and brown communities. So what if the CVS is burning? Oh no, people are gonna miss their $6/hour with terrible healthcare. In its place a better society needs to be built. Don’t turn away from rebellions and turn away from uprisings when this country was predicated on one. Don’t, in a month, lean into the myth of America by celebrating July 4th and the founding fathers like they weren’t dumping tea, like they weren’t using armed rebellion to create what you call “America.” If anything, what we’re seeing is as American as apple pie, and unfortunately so is white supremacy.
I think a lot about the words by Hanif Abdurraqib for a piece in Medium this week that ties together the discussion we were just having about COVID with this. He calls it, This is our grand re-opening, same as it ever was. “And still here is the same America, a country so eager to return to normal, howling with grief, and soaked in blood. I’m hoping that this is a moment that we can push the boundaries of what is normal, that we can break from this cycle, or find slivers of moments to insist on a better world. But that requires us to not look away.” We say BURN IT ALL DOWN metaphorically, but it’s inspiring to watch that conviction. Take to the streets, don’t look away, stare into the flames.
Brenda: Which is a good transition to the part of the show when we take everything that has sucked this week in sports and put it on a flaming burn pile. Shireen, you wanna get that started?
Shireen: [laughs] Yes, please. So, I have been complaining about Phil Neville since Phil Neville became a thing. I would just like to say, it had been reported that Phil Neville would be on his way out of coaching the English national women’s team. But Phil fuckin’ Neville just can’t stop. In an interview, he stated that he felt like coaching the English women’s national team – undoubtably and arguably one of the top 5 teams in the world – said that his job coaching was a three year “stepping stone” to club football. So a national women’s team, a very highly-ranked team, is what Phil thinks is just en route to the real prize, which is men’s football. Um, no Phil. Sit down, Phil. No one likes you, Phil. I’ve been waiting a long time to be able to metaphorically burn Phil Neville. I think he’s a terrible coach, he was brilliantly out-coached by Jill Ellis, and it brought me a lot of joy. I love Ellen White, a lot. I have problems with the structural racism of that team…I really like Ellen White as a player. Ultimately, I want to see women’s football do well. I wanna see women’s football thrive, and I wanna see it happen without Phil Neville. So I’m going to take Phil and his little stepping stones and his comments about stepping stones and I want to throw it all into the burn pile, happily. Because Phil, that’s where you belong! Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Jessica.
Jessica: So I know that there is racism in hockey because I’m friends with Shireen [Shireen laughing] and I also listen to this podcast. We have covered it a lot, I encourage you to go through our archives, especially our interviews to see who we’ve interviewed on this – mainly Shireen has interviewed on this. So, you might remember in early April on episode 153, when Shireen burned Rangers prospect K’Andre Miller being subjected to racist abuse during a Q&A on Zoom. She noted in that burn that it took the Rangers 3 hours to tweet in response. Let me quote Shireen here: “3 HOURS? I’m sorry, Rangers, not a whole lot of hockey happening right now. What the fuck were you doing for that long?” I’ll circle back to this.
On May 19th, former NHL-er Akim Aliu published a piece at The Players’ Tribune titled Hockey is not for everyone. In the piece, Aliu writes about the intense racist hazing and violence he experienced at the age of 16 on the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. He writes about the isolation he felt all the time, and especially so after his coach, Bill Peters, used the n-word in front of the entire team. He writes about it made him feel like nothing, stripped of his humanity about how often he felt that way while playing. He writes, “The NHL must be better, pure and simple. So many in hockey believe the game to be a home for all, but in reality there are plenty of us who know that’s not the case. It’s never been like that. There was a lot of silence from players, especially white players, in the wake of Aliu’s piece. This is all to come around to my actual burn.
This last week, Tony D’Angelo – who I’d never heard of before, but now I know who he is! – is a player for the NHL’s Rangers, those same New York Rangers. He announced his new podcast that has the mocking title ‘Watch Your Tone’ – I feel like that’s such a giveaway. His teammate, Brendan Lemieux, responded, tweeting, “This podcast is going to push the POLITICALLY CORRECT boundaries– ” he even capitalized ‘politically correct,’ “–that surround current NHL players, and I can’t wait. This is the content fans have been waiting for.” To be clear, there’s no politically correct boundary around NHL players, and you can find this kind of shit content in plenty of places. Lots of aggrieved racist white men have a mic in sports media and are happy to use it.
But now to circle back to where we began: the New York Rangers pretty damn quickly retweeted D’Angelo’s announcement about his podcast. People weren’t pleased. The team ended up un-retweeting it. In response to media inquiries, the Rangers said they have nothing to do with the podcast, Lemieux is not actually a part of it either, and D’Angelo will not be covering politics on the show. Sure. I’m sure politics won’t be covered. No doubt no doubt no doubt. But the name of the podcast gives away the game, and Lemieux, giddy in his response to D’Angelo, made the point clear that this is the same team that Shireen burned in early April for its failure to handle racism quickly is such a huge red flag in and of itself and it makes sense that people are genuinely concerned about the possibility of garbage content coming from this NHL player on his new podcast, so I want to burn that. Burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: My burn is short and unsweet. This week the women’s section of the Bundesliga, the Frauen which we’ve talked a lot about, is back in action. But just three days before play resumed, major clubs including Bayern were still looking for outlets to televise and broadcast the game. Soo…Bundesliga has gone out of its way to pat itself on the back and declare how they’ve done this wonderful thing for women’s football. And it’s true that they had a relief fund and they did not cancel outright – as did EPL, La Liga, and all over the rest of the world – so, whatever. But that’s a really low bar, and the fact that these women are now players and activists, and now they get to be media package specialists! That’s amazing. Thanks for giving them another job. So there were actually players that were pleading with people, like, hey, if you’re interested in broadcasting our game, get in touch with us! What in the actual fuck? I mean, we’re talking about clubs that are associated with UEFA! This is billions of dollars. I can’t even with it. I wanna burn the fact that they’re unwilling to go out and do the whole deal for these athletes. It’s always partial and always forcing them to do more work. So, burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Amira.
Amira: Yeah, I wanna burn Brown University’s decision…Basically, Brown University announced that they were going to be cutting 11 of its varsity sports and transitioning them into club sports. They say that this has nothing to do with cuts made due to COVID. They released a statement saying, “This is for excellence–” they literally called it, “Excellence in Brown University’s Athletics Initiative.” This was done by president Christina Paxson and athletic director Jack Hayes. They said basically this was about “diversity, inclusion and competitiveness.” In particular what I wanna zoom in on on this decision is their choice to cut the men’s track and field program, and I want to tell you why. The men’s track and field program and the women’s track and field program at Brown University are integrated programs: they have the same coaches, they are one team, they are also the most diverse team on campus. Notable alums from this program include Daveed Diggs of Hamilton fame, and also my best friend, Thelma Hughes, who I’ve talked about on the show before. This is the space that became an incubator for many Black and brown athletes on campus, and detaching the men’s team from the women’s team…And the reason why they did it is because it would allow them a lot of space to maneuver under Title IX, because a few years ago it was found that the women were way underrepresented.
Men’s track and field is a large program and that’s one of the reasons it was aimed at for cuts. This would be atrocious on its own but it’s particularly frustrating when you realize that while they’re downgrading these 11 sports to club status, they are creating 2 sports and elevating them to varsity level. One of those sports in particular is sailing. I’m sure you can guess, I don’t have to tell you, that sailing is not quite as diverse, and by “not quite” I mean all white. In the argument that they made about this, they said, well, we’re close to bodies of water, and we’re historically competitive in sailing, so we really want to take advantage of our “natural advantages and history of success, if we can make the right investments.” Homie, if you cared about competitive advantage, then your football team that went 1 and 20 over the last 3 seasons would not have made the cut, first of all. If you cared about diversity and inclusion, you would not have cut the most diverse team on campus in favor of a sailing club that’s now a varsity sport at your school, second of all.
Third of all, you have a $4.2 billion endowment. Your board of governors, like the ones at Hopkins, and Harvard, and Yale, and all of these places, with their MBAs, who are protecting the equity that you have in the endowment, and making cuts that are felt at the lowest level. You did this after the day to sign! There’s 150 athletes that learned overnight that they don’t have a varsity sport that comes with scholarships. It’s awful for many reasons. My best friend, I asked her about this, said, “The way I got to Brown was through track, and for all of us there it gave us a space to feel like we could reclaim space in the university.” That’s what Brown’s track and field program provided for them. And so it being cut, sailing being uplifted…Especially if you’re talking about “competitiveness.” They’ve had Olympians, they have All-Americans, they have national qualifiers. Stop using this language and dressing it up to say that this is anything other than what it is: a way to cut corners, to cut money, to amplify sports that already need country club passes and your daddy’s paycheck. It’s dumb. I’m over it. It’s disgusting. Burn it all down.
All: Burn.
Brenda: Lindsay.
Lindsay: Yeah, quickly, I just wanted to put all baseball owners on our burn pile. [laughter]
Jessica: Pile ‘em on, pile ‘em on.
Lindsay: I’m sure there are some good ones – no, I’m not. So, this past week we’ve seen baseball executives attempting to cut player salaries, in some cases as much as like 70%, and make players agree to just egregious levels of pay cuts without ever opening their own books and showing exactly what is happening to their money and where it is going and being transparent about that with the players. So that is going on on one side, as these billionaire baseball owners attempt to figure out what to do with the coronavirus, and on the other hand you have these executives laying off and cutting hundreds of minor league players who were making $400/week, which is literal pennies to these men in charge. I just think, look, Major League Baseball owners: your asses are showing. You don’t care about taking care of the players who are making you all of your money, nor do you care about the future of the sport because you’re sitting there cutting out the development. For a sport to thrive it needs to be taken care of at the minor leagues as well. So it is clear, it’s been clear, but it is especially vivid now that the baseball owners care about nothing but money and power, and they don’t give a shit about these players no matter how high up or how low on the food chain they are. So just burn. Burn, burn, burn.
All: Burn.
Brenda: After all that burning it’s time to celebrate some of the badass women of the week. Honorable mentions go to Karina Leblanc, who won a Webby Award for her work on the Women’s World Cup 2019 in France. That was for her show with Fox Soccer and Aaron West and their crew.
Also, 20 year old Seychellois swimmer Felicity Passon in 2019 became the first Seychelles swimmer to win gold at the African Games. In February this year, Felicity achieved a remarkable feat when she qualified for the Olympic Games, becoming the first woman swimmer from Seychelles to do this.
Also, Sonia Bermúdez retires, the Spanish footballer who has been 20 years in Spanish football, seeing it go from amateurism to professionalism, playing for the Spanish national team and has nine titles with the league. Happy retirement.
Can I get a drumroll, please?
[drumroll]
Okay, not surprisingly but definitely important, we need to shout out all of the Black women athletes who have been leaders in the fight to end police brutality and racism. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Whew. It’s a hard week, it’s a hard show. What’s good in your worlds? Lindsay?
Lindsay: Oh, I’m so glad I get to go before Amira because [laughter] I get to say that what was good was how excited Amira got over the damn Peloton bike challenge on EPSN. She was live-texting me updates like it was the Super Bowl. It was amazing. [laughter] I don’t get it at all, I had no clue, the things she was telling me…It made absolutely no sense. But seeing a friend that joyful and excited over something, it brought me a lot of joy. That had me laughing all day yesterday. She was all up, tied up in knots.
I was at the DC protest yesterday; I will go back, and what’s good is the organizers there who are on the ground and doing the work and who have been. I have a lot more thoughts on that, but I just wanna thank right now first and foremost the organizers. They are people who have been doing this work for so long, they’ve built up these communities, they’ve built up these resources, and it’s inspiring and empowering and it motivates me to continue to be better, as does this whole conversation, so that’s what’s good. I’m grateful.
Brenda: Amira.
Amira: Yeah, I was very excited about that, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I missed sports or have drunk the Kool Aid and I’m really into Peloton and I’ve decided it was a function of both. It was super fun, low key. Or high key…I was very excited. It was exciting because – me and Michael watched it together – Dawn Staley looked like she was dying. Michael’s like, that how I look like on the bike! It was so funny. But it was really exciting because they put those same rides on demand on the bike right after so you could jump on and I’m proud to say that my final numbers were higher than Allyson Felix AND Dawn Staley–
Shireen: Oh my god.
Amira: –so basically, you can’t tell me anything. I’m an elite athlete, thank you very much. No, I was so excited about that, and generally that has been such a release during these last few weeks. Peloton just made a new hire that I wanna shout out: Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts. She’s the first Black yoga instructor for the company, and she’s dope. She’s a PhD, she’s a Spelmanite, an AKA. She brings a heavy dose of Black Girl Magic to all things yoga. She runs a camp at Spelman for young Black girls to explore their body and art and create and social justice, and I really fuck with her. Her caption was about holding both the joy of being named to this position in the middle of another lynching, and I just have found such a release in a fitness program that doesn’t shy away from the world that they live in. So that was definitely my what’s good this week.
And it’s my birthday week. [Shireen cheering] So that is something that I’m looking…I don’t know if I’m looking forward to it. It is a round number this year, it’s 32, and I do like round numbers – not round numbers, but I like even numbers, so I am excited about that. And this is the last week of homeschooling or whatever the hell it is we’ve been doing. [Shireen laughing] So I’m very excited for that. And also because I very much feel, and I say this with all honesty, that we’re on the brink of a war, and I don’t wanna be in the middle of central PA when that happens, and so we are going on a road trip. I’m really excited to see family and to get the hell out of here to be with me people.
Brenda: Shireen.
Shireen: I just want to thank all the incredible Black people in my life for their work and their continuous love and care, which I end up falling back on a lot. I’ve had a really interesting week. I’ve been experimenting – and thank you Jessica for your constant support with my Kitchenaid mixer – because everybody in the world was baking. I’m not doing bread, but yeah. I made a no-bake Oreo cheesecake, and my daughter Jihad was like, we literally debated about it, and at the end of the day I will go with what she says. I think baked cheesecake is the way to go because it came out very…Almost trifle-ish. It’s solid, but it wasn’t the most successful thing. I thought it would be easier, but Shireen is learning. You can’t have short cuts in baking – you can in cooking, which is why I love cooking. Baking is, like, a thing. Looking at Amira, it’s like baking to me is as complicated as Amira’s stat sheets that she keeps sending me for Peloton and I don’t know what’s happening. [laughter] It’s scary when I see statistics!
Anyways, on that note I also had a video call with Amira and Michael, and if you can ever have that joy in your life to see the two of them together – and they totally need their own show, because they’re hilarious. [Lindsay laughing] Michael has just had it with her, and then he’s had it with me with her. So it’s a lot of fun to video chat with both of us, just a lot of fun. So that brought a lot of joy into my week. And my children and I are actively table tennis-ing, and I got two more paddles so now we play doubles. It’s like, my children are athletes, and my one son Sallahuddin is so missing sports that he ended up trash-talking, and I literally was like, calm down, Jordan, nobody needs that energy in the garage. It’s literally table tennis in the garage. You need to calm down. But he’s missing that competition from the court and we’re like, okay, it’s alright. So that’s been really fun, and I did a piece on the Canadian women’s national team and it got to be edited by Stephanie Yang…
And also, just really quick on joy, if you haven’t heard the segment that Jessica and Amira did on Quidditch, if you think Dr. Amira Rose Davis is smart, listen to Dr. Amira Rose Davis and Jessica talking about Quidditch. I don’t know Quidditch, I didn’t read the Harry Potter books, but I will buy whatever they’re selling, because that was phenomenal from a historical perspective, from a contextual perspective. I was like, what is this!? It’s fascinating. Also, I had a lot of fun with Meg Linehan and Stephanie Yang doing a hot take on the NWSL return. It was a lot of fun, I adore those two women. It was a joy and I’m very grateful to them for jumping on a hot take with me, because I know they’re high in demand and that day was really chaotic. I’m trying to grab joy where I can. End of the day: don’t make no baked cheesecake that’s Oreo, that’s all I’m gonna say.
Brenda: Jessica.
Jessica: Some of my what’s good is that Shireen voice-messaged me about the no-bake Oreo cheesecake and then while she was messaging me Jihad was yelling at her about it, [laughter] so I got to hear in the middle of the message the two of them yelling back and forth about what counts as “baking,” so that was lovely. And then last night my phone rang and it said Amira Rose Davis on the screen and I picked it up and I said hello, and the first thing Amira said was, “ARE YOU ASLEEP?” [laughter] And I wasn’t. It was 9:30. That whole conversation was lovely, but just that moment in particular was so good, like, she was ready to ask me if I was sleeping.
Amira: [laughing] I was concerned!
Lindsay: But she still called!
Shireen: Did she care if you were sleeping? [laughter]
Amira: I did! I deeply care.
Jessica: So, obviously those things were good. I did wanna mention…It’s just a weird time in general, but I do have this book coming out in September that Kavitha Davidson and I wrote called Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, and this week we got our first review! It was from Kirkus and it was a starred review which is a big deal–
Amira: Woo-woo!
Jessica: –industry-insider kind of space. To get a starred review is basically all you can ask for. It’s also just a short, beautiful review and it just made…The whole process of writing a book is really hard and to have someone you don’t know read it and come away with all those kind words, just…It was a lovely feeling this week. So that was very nice.
Brenda: Aw, that’s so nice to hear all your good things. My good thing, let’s see…Friend of the show Frank Guridy reminded me of Robin Kelley’s series of interviews on solidarity.
Amira: Ugh, they’re so good.
Brenda: Ugh, so good.
Amira: They’re so good!
Brenda: One is called Solidarity is not a market exchange. Spoiler alert: it’s not your self-care, okay? Like, you staying home and doing your nails and stuff is not solidarity because you feel good. [laughs] It’s amazing and complicated and challenging, and I just think it’s so worth it. I’m happy you love it too, Amira. That makes me love it that much more too. And then the other one is Louis XVI of France, you know, he was a king who was beheaded for the start of the French Revolution. He was Marie Antoinette’s husband. His descendent, Prince Jean-Comte of Paris, tweeted because he was really upset that a statue of his relative had its hand broken off during a protest, I believe in Louisville. It was hilarious, he tweeted out this complaint that protesters had disregarded the mutual history of France and the US and France’s role in the American Revolution. [laughter]
The responses…I literally was falling off my chair, just falling off my chair. I go back every time I’m upset and look at new ones that come in. I live to see late 18th century historians get in on this. He was so taken down in every which way, but especially the ones that go deep on the historical background because Louis XVI of course presided over one of the most brutal slave societies in Saint Domingue – which is today Haiti – ever. And it’s also good that you just let me talk about this, so thank you very much, that was wonderful. That’s what’s good. Go read it, go read Jean-Comte and think what inbreeding does to your brain. [laughs] Okay, right. Anyways. [Lindsay laughing] Sometimes the family tree just looks like a pole. [more laughter] It’s true! But it’s true!
Jessica: Oh, Brenda Elsey.
Brenda: It’s so gross! Alright, okay, fine. That’s it for this week in Burn It All Down. Burn It All Down lives on Soundcloud but can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play and TuneIn. We do appreciate your reviews and feedback – let us know what we did well and how we can improve. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod, and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com. We will also put up in the show notes some organizations that we think deserve support in case you’re looking for different ways to reach out and give your help if you can to people doing the work around anti-racism and police violence. We do always appreciate our patrons in particular, we could not do this without you. We appreciate your subscribing and we would never be able to keep doing this every week. We’re so grateful for your support, we send our love out to everyone, and I just wanna say: burn on, and not out.