Black Women Athletes Speak Out

In this powerful episode, we check in with 11 black women athletes, passing them the mic and holding space for their voices, emotions, stories, and experiences as they all navigate this moment.

Interviews include Kelsey Bone, Gwen Berry, AJ Andrews, Saroya Tinker, Tziarra King, Ellie Jean, Zariyah Quiroz, Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, Batouly Camara, Alanna Gardner, Dr. M. Aziz

Transcript

Amira: Hi flamethrowers, Amira here with a very special episode of Burn It All Down. If you’ve listened to this week’s episode, 161, you would have heard my co-hosts and myself talking about the recent harmful anti-trans athlete rulings, and athletes in the movement for Black lives in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by the MPD. If you’ve listened to that episode, you’ve heard us highlight athletes speaking out, struggling through and making sense out of the killings of Floyd and also Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade. You also would’ve heard us bringing our usual burn pile, and we shouted out badass women of the week who this week were all the Black female athletes speaking up. But you may have noticed that we did not include an interview.

That is because in this special episode we wanted to give space for the voices of Black women athletes, and not just one interview, not two or even three, but eleven. This special issue features the voices of 10 Black women and one Black girl, from professional sports to college sports, from soccer to softball, basketball to ballet, martial arts. Their voices here have woven together as a powerful testimony. Some voices here are raging and angry, some are just finding their voice, some are questioning. Almost all of them are tired. We’re exhausted. But they’re still going. So we invite you to listen to this cacophony of powerful voices, this assembly of Black women sharing their stories, honoring their truth, and we ask you to join in with them. Witness their words and join them in the long fight for freedom.

Lindsay: Black female athletes speaking out against racism and police brutality is nothing new. Back in 2016 after the police murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, WNBA players lead the way by wearing Black Lives Matter shirts and holding media blackouts where they refused to talk about basketball and would only talk about police violence. When Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee during the national anthem, a few weeks later center Kelsey Bone was the first of multiple WNBA players who joined him in protest. Notably, Kelsey is also the only WNBA player to take a knee outside of the 2016 season. In 2018 she played for the Las Vegas Aces and took a knee for the national anthem before every single game.

We’ve been lucky to have Kelsey on Burn It All Down twice, in episode 22 and episode 60. Today we wanna play you a clip from episode 22, which was recorded in 2017. Back then I talked with Kelsey soon after Donald Trump made headlines calling Kaepernick and other NFL players taking a knee “sons of bitches.” She talks about the reasoning for her protest, which began very soon after she was traded from the Connecticut Sun to the Phoenix Mercury mid-season. Today and every day it’s crucial that we listen to her why, and that we hear what Black people have been saying over and over and over again.

Kelsey: Well, it was a very, very interesting time for me, because you walk into a team such as the Phoenix Mercury, you have all these great players, you have this great tradition, you know, this one of the original organization, one of the, you know, organizations. There’s all this greatness that you’re surrounded by, and then, real life happens. While you’re trying to fit in into all this greatness, things that really mean something to you, and things that really matter, you kind of have to speak up.

I have a younger brother who is 16. My brother is, today, he’s 6’6″. I remember the shooting of Terence Crutcher, in Oklahoma. I remember those cops sitting in the helicopter, looking down, and saying, “Oh, whoa. That’s a big, bad dude.” I remember thinking, “How do you know that?” It’s funny, because I’m sitting here, and I’m back in that moment, and you talk about a big, bad dude, and you talk about what does that look like? You know, my father is 6’5″, my step dad is 6’3″, my brother is 6’6″, I have two uncles that are 6’7″ and 6’8″. I mean, I’m 6’4″ myself. So, what makes you big and bad? Then I fast forward to this summer. I get a phone call from my mother, that my brother is calling her from the mall to come pick him up because he’s been apprehended for shoplifting.

Lindsay: Oh my god.

Kelsey: Now, if you know my brother, that’s how you respond. That’s how you respond. I literally just landed back in Las Vegas, I had just flown from Houston back to Las Vegas when I got this phone call. The emotion that I felt in getting that phone call, what could I do? I was stuck. My brother is a junior in high school. He just turned 16. He has a 3.8 GPA, varsity Basketball player, number seven ranked kid in the city. He was racially profiled in Saks Fifth Avenue.

Why did I kneel? What was going through my head when I knelt? I didn’t care about who was going to be the president. I didn’t care about who felt what. I cared about Donovan Kennedy Williams. I cared about the little boy that is my little brother, because I felt that, in my heart, that it is that easy for it to be my brother. A year later, it was my brother. Now luckily my mom is savvy enough, and my mom works for the school district, and she can go and get a lawyer, and she can go and get my brother out of this situation. If I never had this conversation on your podcast, no one would ever know that this happened to my brother, because my mom is that good.

But everybody’s mom is not. Kalief Browder’s mom couldn’t go get him a lawyer. She couldn’t get her son off of Riker’s Island. It killed the both of them. Everybody is not privy to the things that I’m privy to. So I kneeled for the people who don’t have anyone speaking for them. I kneeled, Colin Kaepernick is right, we need to talk about this. How do we tell these black men how to live, and how to thrive, and how to become successful parts of society if all we do is show them images of them being gunned down, no matter if you’re right, no matter if you’re wrong, no matter if you’re good, no matter if you’re bad. You’re all susceptible to the same thing. Death.

Lindsay: Did you talk with your teammates about it before you took a knee? I know that you guys had obviously had, there had to be some sort of conversation about the black lives matter movement earlier in the summer, is that correct? When you wore the shirts?

Kelsey: Yes.

Lindsay: How did that go? I know, ’cause that was when you had just gotten there.

Kelsey: Well, actually, my teammate Mistie Bass, who was a big part of our player’s association, and was very vocal and having conversations with the rest of the teams in the league on, you know, the stance that we were going to take, and the type of voice we wanted to have in the communities that we serve. Phoenix, D.C., New York, Minnesota, a couple other teams, you know, we did the shirt thing, yes. Mistie and I, we were two of the people who were very vocal in the fines, you know, you’re going to fine us 5,000 dollars a team, 500 dollars a shirt. That was something that, even in that happening, and that being something that Mistie and I pushed very heavily, our teammates were cool with that. No one was upset about the fines, we all talked about it. Everybody was okay with it. The fines were rescinded.

I didn’t tell anyone that I planned on kneeling. My mom didn’t know, my girlfriend didn’t know, no one knew. I told no one that I was going to kneel, because I didn’t want anyone to, one, try to stop me from doing it. And for two, I just didn’t want anybody’s opinion about it. You know? I didn’t feel that I needed to explain myself, and I wasn’t in the place where I really wanted to hear, well this might be the consequence of, or anything like that. Because I was going to do it regardless, so I might as well not even listen to that part.

Lindsay: Right. What was the reaction from your teammates and from fans?

Kelsey: You know, for a very long time, no one kind of even noticed, because I lined up at the very end of the line, because I was new there, so I just got in where I fit in, at the end of the line. So a lot of times, I remember someone interviewing my coach, Sandy Brondello, and asking her about it, and she had no idea that I had been kneeling. This was like, game four at that time. Like, she didn’t even know. I’ll say this about my time in Phoenix, the best organization ever. I mean, no one made me feel any type of way about it. They were very supportive. No one asked me to stop. It, no one even ever mentioned it to me.

Actually, I remember being at Penny Taylor’s retirement dinner, and Sue Bird saying something to me about, good job kneeling, Kels. Sandy, you know, she tells me the story of, yeah, I didn’t even know you were doing it, and so they asked me the other day, good job Kels. That was it. You know, the fans, I got a lot of support from fans on Twitter in the beginning. Then, right around the playoffs, a lot of backlash started to become, you know. I think our first game was Indiana versus the Phoenix Mercury, and we, you know, it was either Penny’s last game, or it’s [Tamika Catching’s] last game, and there was this whole big thing about, you know, if I were to kneel, it would be the most disrespectful thing I could do to such legends in the game. Then, the entire Indiana Fever team takes a knee. So, it’s like, eh.

You know, I was told that I was looking for attention, you know, I was doing this for this, and all kinds of stuff. No. That was never my agenda, that was never my motive, that was never, I never had anything other than I, there’s a young black boy in this world that belongs to me.

Lindsay: Obviously the anthem protests have been reignited, there were some players who were still continuing them, but with Trump’s comments, they were reignited. I saw you post on Instagram a picture of you kneeling last year, and you said “they told me I was just looking for attention, 365 days later, everybody’s awake.” What has it been like seeing this movement reignited, and do you think that the conversation is getting away from where it started and where it needs to be?

Kelsey: You know, initially when I initially saw the clip of Trump saying, you know, what he said, calling the players SOBs and things like that, my initial knee jerk reaction was, I hope every player of color kneels tomorrow. But, I do understand, I’m a big component of do what’s for you. Everybody’s not comfortable with kneeling. Some people might want to lock arms, some people might just can put their hand on your shoulders, and show support in solidarity for your cause. But, the issue I have with the situation is that the narrative has completely shifted. We’re no longer talking about the social injustice and the inequalities of people of color being shot at and killed by the police, and the police getting away with it at alarming rates. We’re not talking about that anymore. We’re talking about Donald Trump. I know that I can’t be the only person in this country that is tired of talking about what Donald Trump has said.

Lindsay: You’re definitely not. There’s another one right here. Yeah.

Kelsey: It’s literally driven me to a headache the past few days. Like, I don’t want to have conversations about it anymore. That’s not what it was about to begin with. There’s no disrespect to the flag. You know, when you protest something, the best way to do it is, you do it in a way that’s going to get people’s attention. Colin Kaepernick just wanted people to start talking. He just, he wasn’t being disrespectful to the military, to vets, to anybody, to the flag. He wanted to spark a conversation. He didn’t say he was going to kneel forever. He just wanted to spark the conversation. Now this man doesn’t have a job anymore. We can kind of all say what we want to say about it, but he doesn’t have a job because his caused all this trouble. Okay, he’s okay with that. When you step out, and you lead the charge, there’s a lot of consequences that come with that, and I’m pretty sure that Colin Kaepernick weighed those consequences before he took a knee. But I feel like, we’ve definitely gotten away from what this was about.

Lindsay: How do we get back? How do athletes get that conversation back?

Kelsey: When you, because, you know, we’ve all seen the, you know, every athlete that kneels just about, that’s done something has made a post on social media. You have to push that narrative. You can’t talk about inclusiveness, and we’re all doing this together, and we’re united, because this is not a united front just yet. We are not united, unfortunately. We are not united. We are, this is not a movement of unity. This is a movement of alarm, hello, wake up, do you see us? Do you hear us? We are not trying to go back to where we’ve come from.

Amira: Over the last week we’ve seen a rush of corporate, university, various business responses, to this moment, rushing out to get statement – some better than others: Ben & Jerry’s, PornHub, Peloton unexpectedly leading the way, setting the bar by putting resources and actionable items to their statements. And then you have things like Team USA, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee that put out a fairly watered-down statement that talked about having support for these protests and for Black lives, all while Gwen Berry is still on probation from when they reprimanded her for protesting at the Pan Am Games last fall. I caught up with Gwen to see how she was feeling right now.

Gwen: Mentally, emotionally and physically, my body is preparing for, honestly, war. I feel like everyone’s confused…I’m confused. I’m not motivated. I feel distressed because I feel like, right now, the country is crying out for change. So, anytime something is dear to you, something is dearest to you, something is embedded in you so deeply, your feelings are indescribable sometimes, because you’re trying to survive. I feel like the main reason why I did what I did is because of the same feelings I’m feeling now. They were subtle, they were more subtle, but I did it for awareness. That were there were, I wanna say, 36 to 58 deaths, innocent people getting killed by armed shooters, and no justice, you know? It was the anniversary of Mike Brown. Mike Brown, he was in my community, he was probably friends with my cousins, you know? I’m from the area where he was slain. We walked the same streets, we went to the same parties. We probably went to the same school functions and exams.

So I feel like that is the reason why I took a stand on that day at that time. And that was a peaceful protest. And now the world is trying to talk about, oh, why aren’t people protesting peacefully? Well, we tried that. We already tried that. So now that results in this. I find myself just trying to answer the questions that I have running through my mind. I just try to get up every day and do what I need to do, because I am here in Houston, Texas, training for the Olympics, even though I don’t know how I feel about that anymore. I am taking breaks from social media sometimes. I feel like if it’s too overwhelming I just delete the app from my phone for a couple of hours just to give my mind a rest and, you know, I just honestly try to take it day by day. I make sure I’m in full contact all the time with my family members, make sure I know where they are. Everyone has locations on on their phone, so we make sure that everyone is safe. Just mentally, I’m trying to get some sleep but, you know, that’s pretty hard too.

Amira: Now, in addition to sleep, Gwen is also trying to get a public apology from Team USA. Please join with her and others demanding that they account for their hypocrisy. She wants it issued to her the same way they sent the probation letter: in the mail, on official paperwork, letterhead and everything. Next, I caught up with AJ Andrews, former guest of the pod, professional softball player, and all-around badass. I invite you to check out some of the work AJ’s been doing using her platform to highlight the experiences of other women athletes, particularly Black women athletes in sport. Just this week she hosted a conversation for The Players’ Tribune with Natasha Cloud about athletic activism in this moment – please check it out. I caught up with AJ to see how she was feeling and talk about softball’s response, or lack thereof.

AJ: Thank you so much for checking in on me and giving me an opportunity to kind of speak my truth and to say what’s been on my mind, because this has really been something that is extremely heavy on my heart, and it’s always been heavy on my heart. It really just, in these times, I feel like you realize and you discover the people that are truly in your corner, and you discover the people that are truly your teammates. You think about it as an athlete, you have so many teammates throughout our lives from when we start at playing sports to the professional level, we encounter so many different teammates, so many different coaches, so many different communities. It’s really very telling to have these circumstances where injustices arise, and to see so many people that called me a teammate go silent.

I think, for me, it’s been something that’s been really eye-opening because you’ve made it really clear I am not your teammate, I’m only of importance to you when we step on that field. Because when this isn’t a trending topic anymore, when you don’t feel compelled to say something because everyone else is doing it, at the end of the day I’m still going to be Black. At the end of the day this is more than just a hashtag for me because that hashtag represents not just it potentially being myself, it could potentially be my father, my sister, my brother, anyone because of the fact that the hue of my skin – simply because the hue of my skin is darker than another. You would hope, right, to see more unity. You would hope to see those same people on the field that are defending you and that are by your side for a championship, championing you along the way, be those same people that are championing you for your right to take a jog without being harassed or killed, for your right to sleep in your own house without being killed, your right to go to the store without being killed. You can rally all this energy, rally up all these words to cheer for me on the field, but you can’t cheer for me and be there for me when I’m fighting, not for a game but truly for my life.

For me that’s what’s been really hurtful. I think that silence is so deafening, and I think that it is truly speaking profoundly for all these people – that I truly believe they think they’re going unnoticed, that they’re getting away unscathed because they don’t want to make it “political.” Which to me makes absolutely no sense because shouldn’t everyone be against racism? Is this something new? In my mind, I’m just like, is this a new…I don’t understand. Why is this something that is so complex to speak on? I think if you are not a part of the solution then you are very well a part of the problem. We have this saying in sports that just about every athlete has been told or has said, and it’s that you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you want to see change in this world you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s just…Whew, it’s hard. It’s touchy.

My mind right now, I’m just…I’m infuriated, honestly, infuriated that this hasn’t changed. Conversations I’ve had with my father sound the exact same when he was younger. Conversations I’ve had with my grandparents sound the exact same from when they were younger. One thing I wrote today on my sign, I went out to protest, and I said a James Baldwin quote where he says, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced.” It brought me to a softball analogy where at the end of the day it just made me think, yeah, me making my efforts, I might strike out but one thing I’m not gonna do is I’m not gonna strike out looking. I’m not gonna do nothing. It just brought me to this point where I’m thinking, how many of you even stepped up to the plate? How many of you even showed up to the game? How many of you even just said, “I don’t like what’s happening,” “This is not okay.” What have you done to be a part of the solution?

Because again, in sports, if you wanna relate this to sports, I always talk about getting 1% better every day, and if you’re not getting better you’re getting worse. If you’re not trying to actively stop racism I firmly believe you’re for it. I think being complicit in any of this is being complacent. If you’re complacent you’re complicit and that’s how I feel, truly. I don’t know. It just infuriates me because regardless, I would be right there next to my teammates if I felt like they were alone or I felt like these injustices were affecting them. It’s hard to feel like you don’t have that support from teammates and coaches, from universities, from organizations. I wish there was a lot more unity when it comes to softball, the way you see in the WNBA and some other sports that have truly grasped the fact that it’s okay to denounce racism. It really is okay, and it really should be the norm.

Amira: From softball we move on to two other predominantly white sports in the United States, hockey and soccer, where Lindsay chats with two women at the beginning of their professional journeys but already raising their voice.

Lindsay: Last month the Metropolitan Riveters selected Saroya Tinker in the first round of the NWHL draft. Coronavirus permitted, she will make her professional debut this fall. We talked about growing up in the overwhelmingly white sport of hockey, the racism that she’s directly experienced, how she’s found her voice, and mostly the importance of these protests.

Saroya: Throughout my career I always knew that I was different from my teammates; I never really found many of my closest friends on my team. When I got to Yale I think my freshman and sophomore years I wasn’t quite comfortable speaking up to the things that were happening in the dressing room, or the comments that had been made, or even letting my team get to know me to the point at which they would recognize that those things were wrong. I would just kind of avoid it. But throughout my upperclassman years, junior and senior year, I think I just really came into my own and started realizing that it is my job to speak up and was able to do that with my teammates, especially with my new coach coming in my senior year, and was able to express to him the difficulties I’ve had and the diversity and inclusion training that I think should be used at Yale and in Yale athletics.

So actually my senior year I was able to play with Kiersten Goode, she’s a freshman, going to be a sophomore this upcoming year at Yale, and she is also Black. So that was actually my first time playing with another Black girl throughout my whole hockey career and it was just really nice to have somebody that I could look to in the dressing room in certain situations. I know that she really looks up to me, and I felt like it was my job to be there for her, as a sister or whatever you may say. I think that now is my time to speak up and I felt comfortable knowing that other Black hockey players are doing so as well. In my story I told how another parent in the stands called me a crossbreed to my mom, and my mom had no idea how to react to that. I would also say that at Yale in the hockey community it’s a very rich white culture, so I think that a lot of our players aren’t able to recognize the privilege that they’ve been awarded because of their skin color.

Once Evander Kane started speaking up, I know I’ve followed him in the NHL his whole career and have always enjoyed watching him play, and I think that when he was able to have a strong voice and he was able to vocalize his opinion and was unapologetic about it…And then Sarah Nurse on the women’s side of the game, she’s also another Black Canadian hockey player, and I think that I’ve definitely followed her career as she’s played in the NWHL as well. I think it’s important for us both to use our voices on the women’s side of the game to improve the culture of diversity and inclusion. In the dressing room and in terms of team culture I think it’s definitely important to call out other racist teammates and friends and family members.

Also, just knowing and understanding that white supremacy occurs both overtly and covertly, I think it’s important to research that and educate each other on all those things. And then also just for people to look deeper into their own upbringing and the anti-blackness that has been preached to them throughout their adult life and childhood. And then just the fact that people need to educate themselves on the history of Black America and look deeper into prior public displays of racism. It’s just so important that people educate themselves and are aware of this and then spread that, and that will hopefully result in anti-racism. I know that it’s not my job to educate others but I come from a family where my mom’s white and my dad’s Black, so I know that my family members have questions and I know that my friends have questions and all my teammates and coaches have questions. I think that it’s important that people feel comfortable reaching out to have those answered, because as much as it is difficult to communicate these things as it’s emotionally taxing, I think it’s important to create a platform where people feel comfortable talking to each other about it.

I just want to be able to do that because I know that I have so many white friends, family members, teammates that aren’t aware of all this stuff and they do want answers, so I wanna be there to answer that for them. I think that for me it’s so hard to see all of the negative stuff all over social media and in the news, but also just realizing that it’s our time to speak up and realizing that it’s important to use your platform in the way that you can. It’s so saddening…I know that I’ve taken time and cried to myself, expressed my sadness to my family and my brothers, but I think that the biggest takeaway is that it’s time for people to realize that we have tried to silently protest and peacefully protest and it hasn’t worked, and it hasn’t worked for years, and it’s 2020. I think that what’s going on right now, it makes sense, and we’re no longer going to put up with being ignored.

Lindsay: Tziarra King is a rookie in the National Women’s Soccer League who was drafted 9th overall in the first round of this year’s draft by the Utah Royals. A little over a week ago she moved to Utah, one of the whitest states in the country, for this season. She’s mostly had to process the murder of Floyd and the protests alone. We talked about how she’s feeling, how she’s adjusting to her new neighborhood, trying to initiate these tough conversations with the Royals organization and her teammates, what she would like from her teammates, and mainly the point she wants everyone to remember.

Tziarra: It’s been pretty tough, you know? It’s something that kind of just builds up onto itself because it’s, like, every so often we see it again, we see a new hashtag, we see #BlackLivesMatter trending again, and it’s like, okay, maybe this is gonna be the time that we see justice is served. And then again we see justice is not served. It’s just hard thinking about your family members, your friends – are they safe? Am I safe? It’s just a lot. It’s a lot, really. Social media is so good in the regard that we can spread information and we can let these injustices be brought to light, but at the same time it really can be traumatizing, because it’s like, okay, we keep seeing the same thing over again. We keep seeing videos of people being killed, it’s almost like desensitizing at the same time. This last week especially has been kind of like, information overload. We keep seeing protests, we keep seeing people getting tear gassed, we keep seeing…You know what I mean? It’s a lot, it’s definitely a lot.

It’s been hard. I’ve definitely been communicating a lot with my family, just talking about these things with my family and my friends, just kind of checking in on everybody, seeing how everybody’s doing. But I mean, just trying to scope out the new area that I’m in here. I like to go on walks, I like to just think, digest, observe, things like that. Looking at the trees, looking at the flowers blooming, just trying to enjoy the beauty of nature for right now, honestly, just look on the positive side. But also getting a vibe for the people I walk past, kind of seeing like, okay, are they smiling? Are they looking my direction? Things like that.

Lindsay: Just trying to feel if you feel safe there?

Tziarra: Yeah. But other than that everybody here has been, as far as the club goes, has been pretty…We haven’t really had much interaction, so it’s been hard to even really have conversations, but I kind of extended an arm to say, look, this is an issue, and if you guys wanna talk about it I’m here to talk about it. I’m not uncomfortable having these conversations because they need to be had, even though I really barely know these people, I just want it to be known that I’m communicating about the things that I care about. It’s hard because this is an uncomfortable conversation and at the end of the day of course you want everybody to want to have the conversation and want to reach out and want to start the conversation. But at the end of the day, bottom line is it’s not always gonna be the case.

But yeah, there has been definitely people that have reached out, and from the coaching staff as well, so that was also really comforting, I guess you could say, in some regard. I mean, first and foremost, have the conversations that are uncomfortable. Reach out, for non-Black people or non-minorities or whatever term you wanna use, just hear people out. Listen when someone oppressed is expressing…And don’t try to turn it around and make it about you, you know what I mean? Just listen. I think that’s really important because I think it’s so easy to deflect and to take away from what the root of the issue is here. At the end of the day you don’t understand and you probably won’t ever understand what it’s like to be Black in this country, and so when people are expressing themselves, just listen, you know?

On top of that I just hope the NWSL and the players and everyone will do everything in their power to prevent racism in whatever form, in whatever way that may be prevented from continuing to spread and continuing to infiltrate the society that we live in. At the end of the day there are serious injustices in this country that relate to Black people and it’s deeper than everything that you’re seeing on the news. It starts from the foundation that this country was built on, and I just hope people understand that. People are doing everything in their power to deflect from the original issue at hand, and I just hope that people see past all of the, “Oh, they’re criminals, they’re looting and they’re destroying…”

Look at the root here, okay? The root is people of color are being oppressed, Black people are being oppressed, okay? Do everything in your power to just…I don’t know. It’s hard because it’s in our power, it sounds like it’s easier, but the bottom line is it’s the people in power, it’s the people with a lot of money, the higher up people that have the control, and the government officials that are letting these things slide. But all you can do is do what you can do, and that is: have the conversations, donate to the causes, vote.

Amira: Black people and Blackness itself contains multitudes, and no one journey is the same. Next up, I chat with my former student, the marvelous Ellie Jean, as she embarks on her professional soccer career in Europe. She chats about learning to navigate and own her racial identity while finding her voice at the same time.

Ellie: So, I am feeling very overwhelmed – I am actually doing a lot better today, yesterday was actually really tough for me. Just going on the internet and in my headspace I was like, ugh, I feel like I need to get away a little bit from viewing all this. I also had a lot of people reaching out to me, which I’m very grateful for, to express their support for the Black community and all of that. But yeah, it gets really exhausting. I’m of mixed race, my father’s from the Dominican and my mother’s white, she’s just from Mass in the United States. My father left me and my mother when I was in first grade, second grade, around that time, so fairly young. My mom was raising me as a single mother and I mainly only had contact with all of my mom’s side. My dad’s side of the family not so much because they’re in the Dominican. I grew up with a white single mom and I went to school with all white kids, I played sports with all white kids.

I knew at a young age I looked different, but I really didn’t think much of it. I felt like, oh, I’m just this white kid in this white town, nothing’s really…It’s going well, la la la. Obviously as I get older things start to change and we’re obviously starting to learn more about, you know, the world is not always a safe place, it’s not always butterflies and rainbows. I experienced a lot of micro-aggressions and kind of blatant racism from a lot of my “friends” in high school, just thinking that it’s funny or…And me also not knowing how to react to those situations, because I never had that type of education. Even now sometimes I feel like my perspective isn’t always valid because I feel like I haven’t – and I do understand that it is – but I often have an internal conflict with wanting to speak out and talk about these things, because I know that I’m in a privileged situation. The color of my skin is lighter than others and that protects me in a lot of ways.

I’ve been trying to have discussions with my family, and my best friend and I actually went to a protest a few days ago, which was great. I think that might’ve been her first protest and her first real, like, speaking out about race issues, which I was really proud of her for doing. I just hope that people understand that it takes more than posting something on social media for things to actually occur, and I’ve even had to learn that. In almost every environment that I’ve been in – no, I don’t want to say in almost – all of the environments I’ve been in, especially through my athletic career, I have been in the minority. I’m trying to go through figuring out my whole entire Black identity, but whenever I step into a space I’m already identified as Black, that’s the first thing that people see. My awareness is certainly growing, especially as I go into a professional environment.

I’m also trying to speak out about these issues. I know that you have your colleague who does the Fare Network, which I really hope to get into one day. When I was at FCN we got to choose females who we got to put on the back of our shirt and I chose Crystal Dunn, just because not only is she a phenomenal player on the US women’s national team, but she’s also trying to bring up these issues for women’s soccer in the United States and how it’s predominantly white and how she hasn’t seen a lot of players that look like herself, she’s trying to push those barriers. I’m kind of trying to go in her path. When I was in Denmark actually I did have a few conversations with people, a lot of my teammates just asking like, “Oh, why is the United States doing this?” and “Why that?” and I’m like, uh, I don’t know! I’m just trying to figure out and wrap my head around it as much as you guys are about just talking about the difference in environments from the United States to Denmark.

I’m really excited to be heading to Holland, I really can’t wait, but I also do understand that I will be a minority there as well. I think for me I just want to speak my truth and I want to say that yeah, these issues aren’t fixed, but it’s not just the United States that these issues affect, it’s all over the world. We’ve even seen that within the past couple of months about all the racial inequality that’s going on within the football world. We’ve seen all the racial slurs that were being screamed at certain players on the pitch and so obviously it’s not just a United States issue. We’re the home of the free, but then obviously not everybody is free.

Amira: Well, a lot of our focus is centered on athletes at the collegiate and professional level. There’s athletes across this country in grade school, in middle school, in high school, who are also contending with these same issues. Certainly Black children especially don’t have the innocence of childhood for very long. Tamir Rice and Aiyana Iana Stanley-Jones are painful, heartbreaking reminders. They are not spared from state-sanctioned violence and are a necessary and integral part of this conversation. From athlete activists to general activists on the streets, the youth have been a vibrant part of this moment for Black lives and also are contending with some of the same themes that their older counterparts are as well. With this in mind, I thought it was really important to hold space for that experience. So I chatted with one of the dopest teenagers I know, Black girl magic personified, Afro-Latinx elite Black ballerina to talk about what she’s feeling at this time.

Zariyah: Hi. I’m Zariyah Quiroz, I’m 13 years old and I’m a dancer with Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. I’ve been pretty weary and tired for the most part. I’ve just been really struggling with all the mass killings and I’ve been really anxious and angry, and my surroundings aren’t helping, especially social media, it’s just been jam-packed with all this information. It’s just really been having an impact on my mental health. I feel like within dance it’s just been predominantly white and it’s targeted towards a wealthier community, and it’s targeted towards a white wealthier community. So when it comes to ballet even simple things such as pink tights or pink ballet shoes, the meaning of those things are they’re supposed to blend into your body and extend the line of your body, but they’re all white. I’m lucky that Freed of London has come out with black and brown leotards and tights and pointe shoes, but it’s not always been this way.

It’s just been really difficult. Even hair, putting it in a bun – my hair isn’t supposed to be in a tight bun all the time, it’s not supposed to have hairspray in it. I have really been struggling with not only my dance company but a lot of dance companies within the country. I really only know that some speak out when Black ballerinas within their companies are raising awareness about these issues, because they always claim to be diverse until it’s time to show up and be there and advocate, and I think they really only show awareness or raise any concern when somebody speaks out and specifically says their company name. This week I was really lucky to talk to Amanda Morgan, one of the company members at my Pacific Northwest Ballet ballet, and she has gone to a lot of protests this week and she’s been speaking out, it’s really impressive.

I’ve just had a really hard time with a lot of my white friends and dancers. Before their parents wouldn’t even let them watch The Hate U Give – and now I see some of them advocating, but they’re so silent. I know they can speak and I know they have platforms to advocate but I’m just not seeing it. Even today, posting a black picture on your page isn’t advocating, it just feels like it’s become a trend rather than a priority or a movement or change. I hope to live in a world one day, or maybe take steps and create a world, where everyone has justice and we just have community-building. I just feel right now it’s so broken. I just feel like we don’t have enough spaces, especially for POCs or Black women, to share their ideas and just be coherently all togehter and speak out about these issues. I’m really tired of seeing the separation and I just feel like right now obviously it’s difficult because we’re all in quarantine…But I’m just really tired. I want to see my Black friends, I wanna talk with them, I wanna communicate. I just want everyone to take a break and take time to yourself because this has been really overwhelming and really difficult to handle.

Find something that you love to do and continue to do it and just persevere and thrive, because I think everybody needs to hear that right now, especially the Black community. I just want everyone to strive and be happy. It’s just been really hard for me because I’m really trying to stay off social media when it’s so jam-packed with all this information, it’s really difficult. But I think there’s a lot of weight on my generation to, just because of how messed up everything is and has been for a long time, to create a new amazing world. But it feels right now like it’s never gonna be that way, that there’s never gonna be change, and it’s really difficult. I feel like I keep on hitting the same brick wall, because I can’t change the world myself, it takes a lot of people. But yeah, I’ve just really been feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders.

Amira: Next, Shireen chats with Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir. You may remember her for her standout record-smashing high school basketball career, or her D1 basketball career, or as one of the women who was instrumental in tearing down FIBA’s hijab ban. But in addition to being an educator, mentor, coach and public speaker, Bilqis added a very new, very important addition to her resume: she’s the new mom to a beautiful baby boy named Azyaan. Shireen caught up with her to chat about being a Black Muslim, and now a Black mother to a Black son during this time.

Bilqis: Honestly, what’s going on definitely has hit me harder than it has in the past, because as we know things like this have been going on for years. I guess now that I’m in a new journey, as you mentioned, a mother of a Black son, of a Black boy who of course you just love so quickly, which I didn’t think that love could exist. I guess I’m just a little fearful, and that’s new for me to say, because usually I’m the strong type and kind of just don’t let anything faze me, you know, as an athlete you have to have this fire in you and this resilience. I haven’t actually put my feelings into words yet about what’s going on, and I’m still really trying to digest it all. So, having feelings right now in this moment, like I said, I’m a little bit fearful. As a Muslim of course, we are to tie our camel and trust Allah and trust God and understand that He is the best of planners and He is the one that allows things to happen. It’s in His will and His knowledge why this happening. I can see the beauty in some of this, you get what I’m saying?

However when it hits close to home and as a Black woman, as a Black wife, as a Black mother,  and as a Black person in general, you’re afraid. You’re afraid for your own family, you’re afraid for every other Black person in the world that may go through being killed because of what you look like, you know? It’s like, when do we get a break? What people don’t understand in the Muslim world, we like to think as Muslims that this doesn’t happen or we close our doors to it or we turn a blind eye to it because Allah said in the Quran that we’re created from different nations and different tribes to get to know each other, and if I see that verse one more time…Like, I love Allah’s words, don’t get me wrong, but if I see that verse one more time posted by a non-Black Muslim…It’s almost going to irritate my soul. A lot of Muslims don’t understand that Islam in America started from Black people, you know? And we don’t want to acknowledge that.

Again, I just really started to accept my Blackness, I would say, probably 3-4 years ago when I was going through the FIBA situation. Growing up as a Black girl, you almost didn’t wanna look Black. So for me growing up, when somebody said, oh, I looked like I was mixed, or my hair didn’t look like a “normal” Black girl’s hair, you know? You almost took pride in it, because that’s what you learned. You felt like you didn’t wanna look like a Black person because it wasn’t pretty, you know? It was sad, now that I think about it. Sometimes people would ask me, “Are you Black?” and I would say, “Yeah, but I think I have Native American in me.” You know? Just to feel like a part of you was pretty.

I’m sitting here trying to digest it and I look at my newborn son and I see him just like, man…You’re seeing these posts, “When will I no longer be a cute little boy? When am I gonna turn into this intimidating Black man that people see Black men as?” So for him, it’s like, at what age do we have to prepare him? My husband just told me the other day – he shared it a little while ago too, but he brought it up – his dad was a cop for over 30 years, and he sat him down probably at the age of 10 and told him, “This is what you do when the cops pull you over…” This was 28 years ago when my husband had to have this conversation with his father. And I have to have the same conversation in 2030, god willing, with my son.

Amira: Next, Shireen talks with recent UConn grad and a member of their storied women’s basketball program, Batouly Camara.

Batouly: At the moment it is a lot to take in. There are so many different layers to this fight, to our fight, to our collective fight and to our collective healing. To be able to process all of that at once and really just try to connect with different people on different forms…At the end of the day, it has been very important for me to work to take care of myself, of my spirit, while also connecting like I said with others who are at the front lines, those who may be sharing information and are at different forms of advocacy during this time. I would say for me, the biggest part that I would say to those, especially athletes, is: do your research. Understand what’s happening. Don’t leave it to social media to tell you everything. Go out, do your research. Today there are votes – figure out in which states that’s happening. Not only share information, but actually know what the information is you’re sharing, and be able to speak on it, because you can then take that into your household and I think that’s where you create impactful change.

But I’m so thankful that when I went to UConn I had a great experience on the basketball court, I had a great experience in the classroom, I had an amazing experience creating with players who were human, who were real, who were at the forefront of these fights as you look at a lot of the WNBA teams who were kneeling and were part of those movements and who were loud about it, and who were proud about what they were fighting for, as they should. It just meant so much to me to be a part of that and to know that they were at the forefront doing that and then to say, okay, now that there’s a shift and more athletes are coming out you have teams giving out statements. When you look at sport, I don’t think we’ve had conversations about sport without people of color, without Black people, and so you kind of get to that line of…If we don’t, then we’re completely disregarding a portion of our staff, of our players, of who we play the game for and who’s playing the game. Being in a unique space as an athlete, you kind of live in the intersection of fights against racism, against maybe Islamophobia, sexism.

Someone once said that to be Black and to be Muslim at the moment is a place of culture, of activism, of strong history of education, of innovation and art and creativity, a strong history of survival. For me, it’s being able to say: I can coexist, and be everything that I am without you just defining me and minimizing me to an athlete, which is an immense title that I hold, but to say that they’re all important and I don’t want to be described as one or the other. That erases my family, that erases my history, and that erases my future. Being able to share your story, there’s nothing more powerful, so I would say those voices are speaking but they’re not always being heard, and I think it’s such an important time. I will never forget a statement my coach made back when I first got to UConn, and they said, “What are your thoughts about race?” and he said, “I have a girl on my team who’s African, she’s Muslim and she’s a woman, and if anyone goes against her they’re going against me.” That was one of the most powerful statements I think he’s ever said to me that reaffirmed me in a lot of ways.

I would say the biggest lesson for me has been there is an immense amount of hurt within communities of all kinds, there is an immense amount of hurt. So when I talk about this fight against systematic racism, there has to be an element of collective healing because that’s what it is. There’s a deep level of hurt of my family, of who this affects, and how it affects us. These are conversations at the dinner table. People are losing sleep. It throws you off balance to where you can’t even function the same way because deep down you’re like, it could’ve been me, it could’ve been someone I love. It was clear to me. I would say the biggest thing I’ve learned is yes, there’s a fight, but there’s also so much space needed for people to actually heal.

Amira: In so many of the conversations you hear over and over again, people say they’re tired. Black women say they’re exhausted. Batouly just said, “We need to heal.” In many of these conversations, our own podcast included, a lot of times the perceived audience is somebody who’s beginning their journey, and so a lot of the advice being given out is about how to get involved, how to be uncomfortable, how to talk about race. I wanted to hold space here for a different conversation, one centered on Black women who are looking to figure out how to survive, how to love themselves during this, how to practice self-care. So for that I called up my friend Alanna Gardner, MFT. She’s an individual and relationship specialist, a fitness professional, and a heart warrior.

Alanna: I think energetically and emotionally I feel heavy, for a plethora of reasons. You know, being a Black person, a Black woman, existing in a Black body in a predominantly Black city, is challenging right now. It’s really harrowing. I’m feeling very heavy, but also very conflicted about what to do with my heaviness or how present I’m willing to be while also caring for other people. Black people aren’t a monolith, so we’re not all going to want to show up in the same ways when it comes to our own self-care and recognizing that even if we’re all being hit with the same stressors, with the same stimuli, unfortunate stimuli, that you have to recognize and acknowledge how that manifests for you, right? Some people I think are highly mobilized, so it’s like, I’m anxious about these things, or no, like, I feel very much like I have to go out and do something and be able to advocate for myself and I’m willing to jump into any sort of form of self-care or emotional wellbeing or activism that I possible can do.

While on the other scheme of it, there’s people who are just so numb to a lot of what it is that we’re experiencing and what we’re going through. The framework of how I like to work in my practice and work with clients – you used the word holistic – so for me, I do kind of look at self-care in the same way. When I say holistic or holistic practices or holistic healing, it really is coming from this idea of the self-system and the various parts and pieces of us as a human being that very much make up who we are and that we can tap into and utilize, right? Whether it be the physical body, the emotional body, the mental body, the spiritual body, or the relational body, your self-care practices can reflect all those different parts of the self-system, right? So when you talk about the physical body, it literally is, you know, your actual body – how are you hydrating it? How are you sleeping? How are you physically moving your body in ways that’s going to help you either relieve stress or keep your body maintained in a healthy state, you know? Are you nourishing yourself well, are you feeding yourself well? That’s just kind of basic bare minimum type of things.

I think when we think about physical self-care it tends to just kind of only focus on working out or trying to be as “healthy” as we possibly can be, but really a good diet and workout routine doesn’t outrun lack of sleep or it doesn’t outrun the fact that you’re not drinking water, things like that. So really thinking about your physical self-care and tapping into how nourished am I keeping myself? Whether that be through my hydration, through my food intake, through my sleep, my quality of sleep. Those are basic physical things that you can tap into that has nothing to do with weight loss, a scale. I’m also a big fan of utilizing physical fitness in a way that’s sort of joyful, right? Not trying to shrink or manipulate your body in any sort of way, you’re really just trying to tap into physically moving your body because it feels good to do so, right?

So then there’s emotional self-care, that’s how emotions are sort of showing up for you. Again, emotions are very much tied to our physical body, emotions are the language of the body and thoughts are the language of the brain. So being able to have a relationship with not just naming and labeling your emotions but, I think, having an effective release for those emotions. Are you able to write about them, are you able to speak about them, are you about to breathe through whatever it is that you’re emotionally experiencing? Breath is the first thing that you have when you come into this world and it’s the last thing that you take when you make your transition out. So being able to utilize things like breath work to be able to ground yourself enough to sit with your emotions is really important, you know.

Talking to people outside of yourself…Just because we’re in a pandemic, and you have listeners from all over, everybody’s pandemic practices probably look very different right now. Some people might be in the yellow, some people might be totally reopened, some people just don’t feel safe enough to leave their homes. There’s literally a therapeutic resources for probably each and every one of those things. I think that something that myself and other wellness practitioners that I’m connected to have tried our best to do is offer virtual practices or a virtual holding of space. I’ll be sure to send over some additional resources because I’m very much somebody who’s big on taking insight and turning it into action, there’s no point in having newfound insight if you’re not going to make it actionable. So I’ll definitely send over some additional resources to hopefully hold and keep people during this time.

Amira: We round out the interviews today with my friend, Dr. M. Aziz, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan’s American culture PhD program. I’m so pleased to say she’ll be joining us here at Penn State as post doc in African American history. Dr. Aziz’s work is on Black power and martial arts, but she’s also a scholar practitioner, a second degree black belt. Here Dr. Aziz offers us words about finding self care, meanings of martial arts, and the power of the practice.

M: Black life, for me, has been about my bo staff, for the past couple of weeks. My bo staff is wooden, it’s an extension of my hand, and as a martial artist I whip it around my head and make circular movements around my body to move through the pain that I’ve been feeling, not only around the murder of George Floyd but around the murders of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and also locally in Michigan Aura Rosser. I haven’t practiced martial arts outside in quite some time and every time I do I’m cognizant of the fact that my Black Muslim body comes off in a certain way to a white bystander that me twirling my bo staff above my head is art to me, is embodied healing, is a form of wellness to exert and release all of the pain that I’m moving through, watching so much Black life turn into Black death.

I’ve used this as a form of wellness for so many years dating back to the time when after the 2016 elections I taught a slew of anti-hate crime self-defense seminars which were as much about learning how to defend Black and brown and queer bodies and trans bodies as much as they were about moving through the moment and finding a source of comfort by reconnecting with our bodies as they are and not as people believe they should be. What was so powerful to me about that work was that we were not teaching people empowerment, but creating space for them to empower themselves through martial arts and unarmed self-defense. My wellness increases every time I remember that we had classrooms with old South Asian Muslim aunties, with young trans and non-binary folk, rooms that people said could not be created, but rooms that we manifested where we all move together and learn to have a different relationship, to not only our bodies but the bodies of others. Creating this type of space has always been my politick, and making this type of space safe has always been my politick.

But as I’ve been standing outside, moving through the air, transcending with my staff, I’m reminded again that there’s no safe space for bodies that look like mine. What so often gets left out of narratives around Black Lives Matter is that we always have to say her name and say their names, that Black folk regardless of gender are at dangerous risk of state violence and intra-community violence. As a scholar practitioner, I know that this is nothing new, I know that the FBI and police departments surveilled the Nation of Islam for practicing martial arts and learning how to defend themselves against police dogs and police batons, that they were learning to defend themselves against staffs being used against them. I know this is nothing new because under Black women’s leadership in Oakland the Black Panther Party taught young kids martial arts and yoga so that they could experience movement arts, so that they could feel through the anger, the sadness and the joy of being young and Black in the 1970s in the United States.

I’m reminded of their legacies in these moments as I try to move my body freely outside, that part of Black liberation has always been about Black liberation and moving the body through space and time as you see fit, to be able to walk to a corner store and be able to leave unharmed, to be able to get home or to wake up in your bed safe and sound, to be able to have an interaction with another civilian and not have a law enforcement officer called on you, that liberation is about opening up space and allowing people to live and breathe and move as they want to. I think as I twirl my bo staff through the air, will I no longer be able to breathe like Aura Rosser? Will I ever have a police officer’s knee on my neck like George Floyd? And I know as somebody who studies martial arts that these types of tactics are harmful, that these types of tactics are deadly, and that people who are taught these tactics are not unassuming and unaware. They know when they use them how threatening they are to the human body and the human life, and I understand the deep history between law enforcement in the United States and the US military using martial arts and combat sports as a way to train people to exert dominance. And I know my own truth that martial ways and martial arts and combat sports are a pathway that lead me to freedom from those who seek to use similar tactics against my body.

Amira: That was The Peace Poets, a collective of artists that celebrate and examine and advocate for life through music and poetry; they’re based in the Bronx. They wrote that song in 2014 after the death of Eric Garner. Please support them, check them out, thepeacepoets.com. Thank you so much for sitting in this space, holding this space with us here at Burn It All Down. A few weeks ago I played a clip of Sweet Honey and The Rock singing the words of Ella Baker, We who believe in freedom must not rest until it comes. And that feels like a world away. We must not rest, the world – it feels like a slugfest right now. It’s hard. It’s hard to trudge through. But this is a marathon, not a sprint. Self care, rejuvenate, connect. We have miles to go before we sleep. I’m so thankful for the space we have here at Burn It All Down to go in depth in these conversations, and I would like to take special time to thank all of the Black women who joined us today to share their truth and their stories and their tears and their rage and their exhaustion: Kelsey Bone, Gwen Berry, AJ Andrews, Saroya Tinker, Tziarra King, Ellie Jean, Zariyah Quiroz, Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, Batouly Camara, Alanna Gardner, Dr. M. Aziz. Thank you, flamethrowers, for bearing witness, for holding this space with us. Every day, but especially now: burn on, not out.