At Slate, Aisha Harris, who is black, takes a principled stand on Gabby Douglas’ gold medal gymnastics win:
I don’t usually throw my support blindly behind anyone of color, whether they’re athletes or politicians or business owners. In fact, I consciously avoid it since that can lead to ill-informed and naïve decisions. But seeing a young black girl perform such amazing feats in a sport where black faces are so rare has been nothing short of exhilarating, and it makes me throw aside my worries about having a racial bias towards a specific athlete.
It’s cliche to suggest that we flip the race of the author and the athlete in an article to see how that would play out. If a white writer celebrated a white person winning a sport dominated by blacks (track, for instance), we all know what would happen.
While the entire U.S. gymnastics team faced the intense scrutiny of the media as they tried to win gold, Gabby has to deal with the additional burden of being the only black athlete on the team. In a country where whiteness is dominant but leaves room for other defining characteristics, black Americans more often have to contend with monolithic representations. Black people are this, and black people are that. And black people are not gymnasts. (emphasis mine)
Yeah, I’m sure Douglas was just fretting away over this. Though the father of Douglas’ teammate Kyla Ross is half black so that might assuage some of Harris’ concerns that Gabby faced such a burden all by her lonesome. Or maybe the burden, if it existed, arose from the undue pressure placed on Douglas’ shoulders by people like Harris who wanted to make the gymnast a political hero.
Douglas’ performance was great. She won a gold medal for herself and her country. As much as I can be proud of someone I don’t know and who competes in a sport I care nothing about, I’m proud of Douglas’ achievement. And it is perfectly fine for Harris to favor Douglas simply because they share the same skin color and genetic background. But, first, remember that next time a white person favors other whites – for whatever reason. But also, such bias is only celebrated when the champion is of minority status. Blacks who vote almost unanimously for Barack Obama are doing the right thing while whites who stack towards conservative candidates are racist.
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Moreover, Gabby is a 14 year old who doesn’t lead a typical life. Most kids, regardless of skin color, don’t get such opportunities. I doubt she is anywhere nearly as concerned with race as all the liberals in the media who want this to be about race instead of skill and performance.
Aisha Taylor is hot, but I don’t think she wrote the article.
She has the privilege of being the only black girl on the team. I wish I were the only white sprinter on a black relay team, it would make me feel special.
Eminem
Eminem is a reason to feel white *shame*.
Black girl wins a judged sport at the multicultural hate whitey olympics… lol huge accomplishment
White black homo hetero….. all that should really matter is if she won because she was the best. But can’t have that. Nope, in the culture where victim ideology and “social justice” is dominant, winning based on merit is an alien concept.
I’m going to take the opposite side of Aisha and say it helped. I bet being the only black girl in a super competitive sport in modern USA helped. No girl would dare criticize her as she has the automatic thas racisss card to use, and I bet some even loved being able to say they had a black gymnast friend, which was probably a unique status booster to her trainign partners. As far as performance, it doesnt mean sh*t. Don’t fall, don’t slip, and stick the landing. It’s always 1955 for liberals with regards to the environment blacks face. Nothing ever changes.
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I’m as big of a reactionary as anyone on the web, test me on any issue and I’ll confirm it in spades, but seeing Gabby win made me happy, partially because she was black. Then, today, I watched a white American get silver in the 10K, and that pleased me very much as well. Both are examples of dedicated, talented individuals performing in statistically unexpected ways. The human spirit looks good when it’s succeeding, and while I doubt that Gabby had it any harder than the average gymnast, it is nice to think of other black kids being inspired by her.
What in columbus says, and, rasberrys to Anonymous.
Black people are UPLIFTED by white people. Every statistic shows when black people are in majority white anything their numbers improve over being in majority black anything. You can look at statistics for black people when black leadership takes office from white people and see how black people’s living standards decline. When Barack Obama leaves office black people will be in worse shape than when he entered. Black people want the narrative to be how bad white people are because they have an intense jealousy, hatred and resentment of white people. Gabby was UPLIFTED by being around white people who have coached her, encouraged her and set a standard for her that she would never get from being around black people. The reality is she likely would have been discouraged from gymnastics by other black people for “acting white.”
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It looks like Gabby is burdened more by being an unabashed Christian than by being black.
@Chuck, do you see the parallel in your excitement for Rutherford and Aisha Harris’ excitement for Gabby Douglas?
@jz
Blowing my mind with your insight.
I just keep shaking my head over this. F***ing liberals just have to drag race into it. This amazingly talented, pretty, dedicated 14-year-old girl just won A GOLD MEDAL for frak’s sake! That had to be the absolute happiest day of her young life, and all she gets from the loony left is “She must be ashamed to be black because of her hair style”? Really???
Every time I think liberals can’t possibly get any nastier and any dumber they prove me wrong.
@Dr. G.
thanks. We all get excited when someone from our own niche breaks out.
“Gabby was UPLIFTED by being around white people who have coached her, encouraged her and set a standard for her that she would never get from being around black people. “
I’d sign on to the general thrust of this statement, believing that happens often enough. But I also right away thought of an exception to this that I see routinely at prep athletic levels; in my state, the yearly state prep basketball tournament invariably features finalist teams that are both urban, black and ‘athletic and individually driven’-type successful teams, squaring off against a few white, rural teams that are equally talented but ‘team-oriented, complementary and strategic”-oriented in how they reached their success. Basically, these white team-work-driven teams and these urban-black athletic-oriented teams have achieved success through completely opposite styles —— and often these black teams are black to the core, in terms of not only the talent, but also the coaches and assistant coaches.
Hi there, nikcrit. Off-topic, but… Any idea what happened to OneSTDV’s blog?
It was weird: The blog sat there unattended for several weeks, then suddenly disappeared without a trace. There now appears to be a “OneSTDV” blog of some sort at WordPress, though it’s also inaccessible.
I’m asking not so much out of personal interest (I was only an occasional reader) but out of sheer curiosity. The whole sequence was so odd.