Interview: Dr. Courtney Cox on the Exhaustion of Black Women in Sport, Media and Academia

In this episode, Amira Rose Davis talks with Dr. Courtney Cox, Assistant Professor of Race and Sport in the Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Oregon, about the exhaustion of the last week – and more – for Black women in sports, in both the media and the academy. They discuss the interconnection between Olympic qualifying snubs of Black athletes across sports, the tenure rejection of journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, disparaging comments made about Maria Taylor within ESPN and Naomi Osaka prioritizing her own mental health, among other events. They also talk about the ways that rest and Black spaces and kinship help them better breathe.

Transcript

Amira: Hey, flamethrowers. To say this week has been exhausting almost is inadequate of a description. To be a Black woman in sports, to be a Black woman in the academy, to be a Black woman has left me bone dead tired. It feels like every day there's a new story. Whether it's Sha’carri Richardson and overcriminalization for something that is a legal activity in multiple states, and has no bearing on the outcome of a race; whether it's Brianna McNeil needing to talk about personal trauma and abortion in order to plead her case for her suspension to be overturned; whether it's Afro swim caps being banned from the Olympics, or multiple athletes being told they're not “female” enough to compete; whether it's Maria Taylor and a continued reminder about how people talk about you, specifically white women, weaponize gender and paint Black women into a corner in which they're undeserving, they're affirmative action recipients, or they're somehow only in their position for diversity points.

Whether it's the ongoing tenure drama with Nikole Hannah-Jones or the names we don't know of Black women in very similar positions. It has felt like a constant deluge of reminders of the state of being. And two weeks before that, Naomi Osaka impressed upon people, A) she's not playing around, and B) what does it look like to take mental health, specifically Black women's mental health, seriously? But also the exclusion of people like Midge Purce or Nneka Ogwumike from national teams. I would just say that this past month has basically had me in my Black girl feelings, and to process that and break it down and understand how all these things feel intersecting and overlapping in ways that I cannot disentangle, even if the context for each of these things are certainly something to think about.

The overwhelmingness of it is the fact that they're compounding. And so I had to call up my friend and co-conspirator Courtney Cox, assistant professor of Indigenous, race and ethnic studies at the University of Oregon, and a brilliant mind on race and sports and cultural politics and transnationalism, diaspora, and all the things. So, Courtney, welcome back to Burn It All Down. 

Courtney: Thank you so much for having me here. You have me…You know, another thing we got this weekend is this viral message to lay down!

Amira: [laughs] Right.

Courtney: [laughs] And so I'm feeling the message of that song so much just listening to you recount that weeks that were.

Amira: Exactly. And that message was so so necessary. And I think once you lay down and you're protecting your peace, the next step for me is processing. And I can think of no better person to do that with than you. So I guess I'll start with just asking how you're doing? It's been exhausting.

Courtney: Absolutely. I think that part of my process, I feel like I've had to hold a lot of space for both celebrating a moment of, you know, even just momentary triumph, victory with Nikole Hannah-Jones this week, while also holding space for not only Maria Taylor, but also Kayla Johnson, who I think is also part of the story of how Black women are treated within these institutions, that we both have to mold ourselves into every day in different ways that were never designed for us, as well as we face the brunt of punishment. We talk about that comparison of how we are constantly over-punished, constantly bearing the weight of other’s decisions, of other's mistakes.

And so for me, I'm sitting and holding a lot of space for all the feelings I could have of both victories, these small or big victories when we see Black women, non binary athletes crushing it, or we see those entering into journalism or academia finding wins, while also saying that because these places were never built for us we are always read in opposition to them. And so once we're read in opposition, then we have to then operate from that space. I don't think we even realize when we're doing it because we always have to be on guard. And that's part of the exhaustion, is even when you are at your best, crushing it twice as good, whatever metaphor you want to bring into it, we are always at risk.

And so there's a way that I've been sitting with this idea of rest and recovery when it feels like we can't even catch our breath. It's like whiplash these past couple of weeks, especially with the Olympics. And then for me, I think it's hit especially hard because I'm looking at Nikole Hannah-Jones, her tenure case, as I'm also going back to my brain for when I used to work at ESPN. So, the academia at ESPN…I think I tweeted that ESPN prepared me for the disrespect of academia as a Black woman. And so I'm having this moment where I'm constantly either going back to moments I've experienced me academy or moments I personally experienced at ESPN that were constantly telling me that I wasn't supposed to be.

Amira: Holding space for all of these kinds of layered in multiple motions for me is like almost the story of…Especially what we've seen with Black women in sports, in the Olympics. Like, you celebrate the wins, you know, I'm thrilled for Raven, for Gabby Thomas. I'm thrilled for folks. And then at the same time you hold these other moments and you're like, I don't even know what to do with this. Like, this is so frustrating. Like the thing about the Nikole Hannah-Jones situation – and for those who are unfamiliar, Nikole Hannah-Jones, award winning journalist, was offered the night chair in journalism at UNC Chapel Hill, her alma mater. She was voted to have tenure by her peers, by her department. The board of trustees basically refused to give her tenure. What we now know, especially thanks to local reporting, is that one prominent donor really tried to prevent her employment.

The last two weeks have been a very public reckoning of what that means. And then this week the board was forced into a public vote, which she won handily, was awarded tenure. And then just recently announced that she would not be taking tenure at UNC, and instead along with Ta-Nehisi Coates joining the faculty at Howard University, bringing the night chair there and starting a new journalism department. You know, both of us being Black women in the academy have seen many Black women pushed out through tenure processes that seem peculiar. But also there's a clip that Nikole talks about, about why she wears her hair red or why she still does her nails how she wants to, or doesn't abandon a Black aesthetic, because she knows it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter what you do. That breadth that you speak about, Court, you never get to take it. So, you might as well be comfortable and do you being you and not sacrifice yourself on the climb, if the climb is still going to be just as arduous regardless.

And I think it's very similar to Maria Taylor, right? And so you have somebody who's worked and who you've seen work and put in the hours and climb this system only to have her ascent still second-guessed by colleagues who would smile to her face, right? And the story initially, when it was reported last year by Deadspin, was framed as some creep tried to get us to cancel Rachel Nichols over a private video. And it was definitely beating the drum of white feminism. And I think there's also that reminder where like, where are these gatekeepers? Where are these people who are constantly missing the mark completely.

Because then again, right in this week, we're thrust into cheering for Malika, which is dope. And then you're constantly holding both of these dualities. And so I wanted to ask you as somebody who has been a Black woman in ESPN about how you've been handling and seeing the Maria Taylor/Rachel Nichols situation. Especially wanted to ask you as somebody who knows media studies, who’s an expert on these things, what you made of that first comeback that Rachel had, the half apology…? I don't know if that's what we’d call it. And then, you know, what it felt like to watch two Black men kind of flank her in that moment and lend their voices to the situation. Like, how did you process all of this?

Courtney: You know, it's not even, for me, about Rachel. Rachel is predictable, as is the response of the Black men that were put in that position. We can talk about even them being put in that position, right? Because when we talk about how we produce something, so for example when someone dies a lot of times there might be an obit read, it goes to black, they go to break. There's a way that producing it and putting those men in that position to defend her, or in some ways to have to do more talking than she has to do as the person that actually caused the harm. There's no apology she has to make to those men because those aren't the people that she harmed. And so the fact that they got more space in this entire little monologue that she gives it's so telling. And the fact that they come to her rescue is a position they were put in, but also a moment they didn't rise to the occasion.

So when we talk about the dual positionality of being a Black woman in that space, and we can add a bunch of positionalities onto that too. It is discouraging and frustrating on one hand from the individual level, but the institutional level, both by the ESPNs, the Deadspins of the world really illustrate to me what we're dealing with when we talk about something called the sports media complex or the sports media nexus and the work that we do, right? There are these intertwined industries that are built on white supremacy, that are built on sexism. They are built into the very fabric of these institutions. So when we ask the question, why women aren't covered more on SportsCenter, we know the answer. When we think about who's behind it, in these producing meetings, in these meetings to talk about this show and make the decision to put these men on the spot, make the decision to have her give the statement. And everyone is co-signing this.

There are very, very big questions that we will continue to have to ask, and to put this all on Rachel erases how white feminism has constantly been on our necks as Black women. It erases what happened to Kayla Johnson by ESPN, when she becomes the person punished–

Amira: More than anybody else in this situation. It's like, how is that the only person…!? 

Courtney: Anyone else!? 

Amira: Right! 

Courtney: Rachel hasn't missed a check, you know? And so I think that I want to both say what Rachel did is very symptomatic, no matter what industry you're in, there's probably a familiar Rachel moment that you've experienced. And so I think there's a way that Black women watch all this play out and they both understand what it's like for people to think you're only in your position because it was a diversity hire, or they think that you're not up to snuff when they don't know the journey. If we go back to Maria Taylor's actual resume, I would love an infographic that led with what Rachel Nichols, her expertise and experiences versus Maria. Maria Taylor has a track record of covering so many sports. She is so well-prepared, she is so versatile, so skilled in a particular way that Rachel could never.

But again, this isn't about Rachel, because she has had to be prepared for this her whole life. She's had to handle this with grace that Rachel could never. She's had to be in that position. And Kayla, we have to talk about the way that Black women stand up for each other when Black men and white women aren’t going to stand with us. Kayla is really the plug here that's like, let me tell you what y’all aren't going to do to my girl. Let me tell you how y'all aren't going to blindside her. She needs to know this happened, and it's ESPN’s responsibility to handle this as an HR issue. This is way above me now, right? It should be above her.

But the fact that she had to step in and do what needed to be done, and the way that that kind of co-conspirator relationship is then processed and punished as a way of like, no, you don't do that, is a way of also trying to destruct kind of what we built together. There is no way if I hear anything involving you, your tenure, your life, anything, I'm not letting you go blind into any situation. What job do I have that’s worth that, right? I have to sleep at night. And so there's a way that when no one else has us, we have us. And so those are the things that hold me. When I think about my experiences, I think about the Black woman that held me in various spaces, that even held me back on Sunday when I'm processing all of these things happening, there were Black women in my text messages, there were Black women in our group chats, folks that know this, that have worked in these spaces and get it.

And so I just want to constantly shift away. I know we can make this about Rachel, but I want to make this about both the institutions that continue to do harm to us individually and collectively, and the way that we will always stand up for each other, whether we're athletes, whether we're journalists, whether we're academics. And I am really set on that. I know Nikole Hannah-Jones is also creating those spaces. That's why there's a whole center. We don't do these individualistic, “I'm going to do this.” It's the fact that if you look at Maria's track record, she also puts so many people on. Her and Malika have a relationship. Everyone will say, well, Maria Taylor helped me with this. Maria got me this internship. Maria is very intentional about the way she creates space for everyone, especially Black women.

And so these are dangerous moves that we make, right? When we refuse to let the institution tokenize us in a particular way, when we say no, I'm gonna put someone on. I name dropped you today in an interview like, you know, Amira Rose Davis is the one that you talk about if you want the history of this. And we do this so effortlessly because we're always knowing that it's a very we are all that we’ve got kind of moment. And so I've been sitting and holding space for both how we will be penalized for holding each other down, even when the very people causing harm don't face any kind of judgment in any kind of way. 

Amira: Absolutely. And I think it's like, HR is not there for employees, right? Basic labor 101 is there to protect the brand and the company. I really appreciate that reframe because I think that a lot of people, especially folks who see themselves and try to say like, oh, this is what Rachel was trying to say, etc, that absolutely get distracted in that conversation. Because here's the thing. We absolutely…And I'm gonna say this and then explain it. Don't anybody run with this. But we absolutely get positions because people all of a sudden get flustered about diversity, right? But there's a difference between getting that and not having earned it. And here's the thing about Black women is that when we talk about being prepared, when we talk about that obviously you have to work twice as hard – and a lot of times it's three times as hard – to get anywhere, it's because you're waiting for that opportunity.

And oftentimes those opportunities come not because somebody woke up on a Wednesday and decided Black women were worthy, [laughter] not because they woke up on a Thursday and decided that Black women were human and brilliant and smart, or even competent. It's not because they woke up the following Tuesday and decided, hey, what they really need to do is bring Black women into the organization. And I talked to Derrick White about Black college coaches, right? So often these opportunities come when an institution is trying to clean up from something. You have a scandal? Oh, now you have a Black coach. [Courtney laughs] Maryland killed a kid? They have a Black coach. Penn State had the Sandusky scandal? Here comes James Franklin.

We know that opportunity comes when you've been catching flack for very clear instances of not investing in things that get codified as “diversity,” but really is because your brand is basic. And so part of that understanding is that you know that oftentimes your opportunity is gonna come either by Black women pulling you up with them or everybody else being forced to acknowledge that you exist. And so I think that people are not naive. I'll never forget when I got my first job out of grad school, right out of grad school, post-doc and a job opportunity at Penn State. And I was at a NEH seminar with a bunch of self-proclaimed feminists. I was the only Black woman participant in this multi-week seminar, and one of only two women of color.

I went to lunch one day with one of them and she said, well, you know, what are you doing next year? And I said, well, I have a job at Penn State. And she was like, oh, I thought you were a post-doc there. I said, yeah, it's rolling over into a job. And without missing a beat, she said, wow, are they desperate for diversity? [Courtney gasps] And then kept chewing.

Courtney: So raggedy.

Amira: So raggedy. And I remember in that moment being like, ohhh, okay. And I was like, absolutely being desperate for diversity makes it easier to push my line through, but I'm not the only Black woman on the market, right? Like, there's a way in which those realities – that I do not make! Those realities, which actually say more about the systems that we're talking about than that has anything to do with me, are absolutely true and can be true. But my preparation is just as true, you know? My ability and deservedness, just like Maria’s, just like yours, just like all of ours, is absolutely true as well. And then I'm like, and then what do we do about the tiredness, right? Because these are things that we know. We didn't need a tape of Rachel Nichols saying what she said to know–

Courtney: A year ago, by the way. [laughs]

Amira: A year ago, a year ago, right? Like, we didn't actually need that audio to know the deal. And so what do we do about that when we think about these institutions and we think about how fickle these other solidarities can be, like, especially when whether it's Team USA or pick a university, [laughs] you know, or a media conglomerate, are so ready to make somebody a token and to do all of this symbolic lifting. What does it look like to survive and thrive and really disrupt spaces and make them more hospitable to us in a way that is not just grueling and watching your bag and finding the kind of other life rafts of Black women, but being able to actually like exhale? 

Courtney: You know, part of it is…I was going back in my brain to this interview that Taylor Rooks did recently on All The Smoke, she was on the podcast. And she talks about how, when she runs into Black women in the industry, her being herself, being a sports journalist, she already knows the caliber that she's working with because she knows what they had to do to get there. And there was something very affirming about her saying that out loud in that kind of space. And I think people sometimes come for the jokes or kind of like the ratchet stories. And there's a certain kind of moment that I think it means for her to very seriously say, I already know what's coming my way and I already know what I'm talking about and who I'm talking to when I'm dealing with Black women in this industry. And I think academia for me has been the same way.

There's a certain kind of understanding. There's a certain kinship that I have found that, especially for the work we do in sports, there's a way that Black women are fake included in a lot of work – and that's a whole other conversation for another day. That happens on the front of both Black men that do this work and white women who think that they're including us. And that same logic that affects their theoretical frameworks also affects how they interact with us in spaces where they are both threatened, right? They're threatened that you're in this space. And then on the other side, they're questioning your credentials through this kind of diversity hire question that is both unfair and not real, because for us to even get in the room, to get a postdoc, to get a job, the ways that we have to make ourselves legible is a level of labor that they will never fully understand. You can read about it. You can talk to people about it, but until you actually live that, there's a way you won't understand the exhaustion.

And so when we acknowledged the exhaustion, where it's coming from, it's not just…You know, there's ways that we put that on ourselves, we feel like we're lazy or we feel like when we're grieving or feeling these forms of everyday…These little death by a thousand cuts, right? And we don't know why we feel tired. Sometimes you just feel it in your body. And there is a way that we guilt ourselves. We overwork, we are overburdened with teaching and service in a way that, again, our peers don't quite understand. There is a way that making it plain, when Taylor says it out loud, you know, there's a way that when other women say Kayla and Maria don't have to speak on this, because we'll speak on this for them. There's a way that I feel seen that I'm trying to work through. And then there's a way that I'm very ready to do the work so that maybe it's a little different for the next generation.

Then Nikole Hannah-Jones tells us in this amazing statement that she crafted regarding her decision to go to Howard, she says, “It is not my job to heal the University of North Carolina.” And I would love everyone to insert whatever they need in that space. The university you work for, the company you go to work for, the post office, whatever it is – it's not our job to heal these spaces. And I think we take on these burdens because we want it to be better for the next generation, but I had to have the reminder of when Nikole Hannah-Jones says about the way that it has weighed on her for weeks, I think that there's also a way this has been so public, also like Maria, also like all of these would-be Olympians that we can talk about. There's a way it's public in a way that maybe our cases will not be public – you know, fingers crossed. [laughter]

And then there's also a way that I'm sitting with what it might mean to relieve myself of the burden of fixing these places that were broken long before I got there, long before I was born. And so I've been trying to kind of lift that yoke and think about the work that I do and who it's for and thinking about…I’m still invested in the types of work, the kinds of folks that I interact with engage with, you know, my kind of co-participants in this work, and then the colleagues, the places that feel good. Those are the places I have to invest because I realize it's a trap otherwise. It's a full trap to try to acquiesce for these spaces that, again, are never thinking of us, and only using us as long as there's some cultural capital that we offer to them. Which is a very slippery, precarious place to live, constantly. But I don't know anything else. I have nothing to compare to, right? So, the exhaustion, where people are like, oh, it must be so hard to have been a Black woman at ESPN or to be a Black woman in Oregon. And I'm like, I actually don't have a comparison, [laughs] but yes, absolutely.

Amira: And I really appreciate that, in that, you know, it's not our responsibility to heal. And it made me think of this quote by Hortense Spillers. It to me is the hand-in-hand with like, not being responsible to heal these places, but like actually being able to reckon fully with how needed Black women, are, right. And so this quote is,

Let’s face it. I am a marked woman, but not everybody knows my name. “Peaches” and “Brown Sugar,” “Sapphire” and “Earth Mother,” “Aunty,” “Granny,” God’s “Holy Fool,” a “Miss Ebony First,” or “Black Woman at the Podium”: I describe a locus of confounded identities, a meeting ground of investments and privations in the national treasury of rhetorical wealth. My country needs me, and if I were not here, I would have to be invented.

Now, that quote Hortense wrote a year before I was born, right? A year before we were on this earth. And to me, it so aptly sums up that symbolic investment in Black women. And one of the reasons why I track it and try to understand it as labor is because I was like, if we're all so tired, we're doing work. Sometimes it's legible to us, sometimes it's not, right? It's definitely not legible to everybody else, [laughs] but what we're talking about in sports media, what we're talking about in academia, I also see so clearly as we're moving through Olympic trials. Now, I know that every conversation we have to start with, “why are we doing the Olympics?” [laughter] 

Courtney: Again, why are these things happening? It's like when you're in bed, like, oh man, I really don't want to go out to this event. Like, you're waiting for that cancellation text. Like, maybe they'll cancel it. 

Amira: Exactly. 

Courtney: This is like a global version of that, of like, why are we still going out? Like, when are the plans being canceled? I can not. I cannot. That's the only place to start from. [laughs]

Amira: Absolutely. Today, Tokyo announced a state of emergency declaration. We’re two weeks out from the games and they're in a state of emergency because of COVID. And yet here we are, rolling merrily along because IOC does not want to let go of those billions of dollars they stand to lose in broadcasting revenue. And so capitalism rides again, and with these conversations in mind that we see happening in the institutions that we occupy, how has that kind of been playing out in these spaces? Whether it's Naomi Osaka, who obviously represents Japan but certainly understands herself to also be part and parcel of this country, and certainly a Black woman. And I don't know if you've had the chance to see the trailer for Naomi Osaka's documentary yet, but her last line of the trailer is like, “I've tied so much of my worth to being a great tennis player. What is left if I'm not good at tennis?” 

Courtney: You know, one of the things that I've been trying to sit with that Naomi's documentary…That trailer is so powerful. I can't wait for it. The thing is, because I think that documentary and, you know, how folks represent themselves in media, especially, especially in your work memoir is very important too, about self naming. And even though there are limits to these platforms, right? So, Netflix is still in these larger corporate spaces. Publishers…There’s limits to the stories that can be told and how they can be told on any of these platforms. But there's something about the practice, and her reasserting her relationship to media – through her mental health, but just in being, right?

This question of, if I don't have the sport, if I put everything into this sport, begs the question of what's left. And that is about our own mental and physical wholeness of being wholly, fully human, where we are constantly objectified and constantly told we cannot be the subject or the object. And so the Spillers quote, I appreciate you sharing that because every time I read that, every time I read Mama's Baby, Papa’s Maybe, I think there's a way that that's such a staggering, important part. And so this idea of constant self creation, it's the constant co-optation.

Amira: Absolutely. Especially when we're thinking about it Jordan Chiles and Simone Biles, when we’re thinking about Simone Manuel, when we’re thinking about all of the stuff that's gone down at track trials, right? I return for me to Simone Manuel, right? And obviously five years ago at the 2016 game, she was the first Black woman to win a gold medal in swimming. And this spring she was diagnosed with over-training. She wasn't sleeping, she didn't have much of an appetite. She was dealing with a lot of symptoms and a lot of stress. And so in March, just a few months before trial, she actually stopped swimming. She got out of the pool, she had to really lean into self care and things that were away from training, which is really hard to do when you're an Olympian and are right before trials.

And one of the things that she talked about with that was the burden, not only on her body and stress and her mental health journey, but very clearly she named being a Black woman, especially Black women in the past year in which we’ve not only had a global pandemic, we've had this kind of pseudo reckoning about race, but we also have had a lot of performative gestures about that as well. And she named that. And so then you fast forward to trials and she misses out on going to Tokyo for the hundred meters, which is an event she medaled in, by like points off of a second. And so it meant that everything was riding on her performance in the 50 meters. And the 50 is the quickest race – it’s over. And so she made it to the finals and she had to finish one or two, and she won it. She finished first. I mean, it's neck and neck. She finished like 0.2 seconds off of third place who didn't get to go to Tokyo.

But the look on her face when she looked up and affirmed her time, then she just floated under the water. She just floated under the water and then she cried, and I was sobbing because the amount of relief, like, that moment to me was like the exhale. And I think about especially athletes like her in predominantly white sports where a lot of their marketing package from the people who represent them are “this is the first Black woman in this sport.” This is the first, this is the barrier breaker. Like, it really leans into that. So I wanted to ask you about some of the things we've seen going on in the sports world as it pertains to Black women. So, you know, what have you been kind of paying attention to? What has resonated the most with you, or made you the most, you know, ragey or emotional?

Courtney: I think that there are pieces, there's a thread through all of the different athletes that we've talked about, journalists, academics, thinkers, scholars. But then I think about someone we haven't talked about yet, that I think was an early piece of that, was Nneka Ogwumike. And you know, full disclosure: I consider Nneka a friend. This was the beginning of my ragey, ranty, these institutions aren't thinking about us, they will snub us no matter what we do, no matter how many championships, all-star appearances, leadership capability. I mean, Nneka has everything, and that's an unbiased assessment, right? [laughs]  That's something we can document. And I was so crushed about Nneka not making Team USA for women's basketball. And then I see this moment where her and her sisters being really taken in by Team Nigeria, and what that possibility...Especially look at the schedule and see when Team USA and Team Nigeria will be playing each other.

There is a moment that might give us the same Nikole Hannah-Jones feeling of like, these structures haven't changed. There's a way we can acknowledge that this is one moment and a larger problem that we can trace back multiple Olympics in terms of who can represent the nation – and whether or not we want to even be represented is another question for another day. But when I add Nneka to this stack of overqualified, overworked athletes, journalists, scholars; when I add her there, and the excellence of having to be both a leader on and off of the court, everything that she's done in terms of activism – I could connect her to someone like Gwen Berry – all the different ways that her labor and leadership isn't acknowledged by the snub.

I can also think about how she has already decided she is more than just this athlete, more than just this member on a team, and the same way we're told, well, you're not going to heal these institutions, we cannot fix them. They are forever broken by capitalism, by white supremacy, by sexism. I'm reminded that she is more than “insert title.” And we have to be more than assistant professors. We are more than the structures that we are within. And so I'm sitting with both the rage that I can't even really speak on, the Nneka thing, fully the way I want to, because it is so frustrating for me. There's all of these different ways that we are left aside. All of these examples have different backdrops, different organizations, different gatekeepers. But what I can speak to is that we have to be fully, wholly ourselves outside of the positions that we occupy. We have to know when to rest.

So part of it is yes, Simone, that 100 wasn't for her. But the reason that the 50 was is because she had that time to rest, to reset, to say, who am I as a Black woman in this space? Who am I as a Black woman in the pool? It's only a small piece of who I am fully as a Black woman in this world. And so I think that while I'm both enraged by all these things individually and collectively, I had to tell myself the exhaustion means I need to rest, the exhaustion means I'm not going to overwork myself or die for this institution. I again return to the lay down song, right? In all its remixes and iterations. I need to read some Nap Ministry. I need to remind myself of what I will not do to myself, to anyone that I care for, to other Black women, in order to thrive in these spaces. And so that's what I am most frustrated by, right? The breadth of this kind of oppression, this marginalization, all of these things that from last summer apparently, you know…I think there's also the disrespect.

I think part of the frustration of last summer is there was all this performative talk about addressing all of these isms and phobias, right? And then here we are this year where they have just manifested and mutated into something different. And so again, knowing that those systems will be performative, will be tokenized in particular ways, it doesn't take away from who we have to be at the end of the day to ourselves and who we have to be at the end of the day for each other. And so I'm sitting with Nneka and her sisters ballin out, and that is both the source of some of the rage and then also a source of inspiration in a particular way for me. 

Amira: Absolutely. And I think that, you know, it was one of those situations that was like, not only is she doing the work in terms of leadership and all these off the court things that you said, but also just in terms of her athletic labor, like, MVP of the last FIBA tournament that they were at? Like, actually putting in the work on the court too. And what happened two days later was that Midge Purce was left off of the women's national team for soccer, in a situation that also enraged me because US Soccer has a habit of taking Black women and converting them from forwards to defenders. See: Dunn, Crystal. You know, Midge knew she was fighting for a spot on the roster, but to come into camp and be converted into a defender and to spend weeks learning that position and playing it…I saw her play a game in Houston where she started half of the game up, scored, and then the second half was moved and played the other half of the game back.

Especially in the Olympics where you have an 18 person roster and versatility is something that you need. I even made a shirt – now you can get it on Bonfire, through BIAD. But like, of all the Black women on the national team now…And I actually couldn't even fit Alanna Cook on it because there's a limit of seven names. And I was like, we've never had this problem, right? [laughter] So it was like the joy of that, and then to have what feels like a smack in the face when the roster was announced, besides Christen Press and Crystal Dunn, it was a very vet-heavy, very white roster with the first people cut: Lynn Williams, Cat Macario, Midge Purce, Alann Cook, suddenly half that shirt of melanated magic were gone. And it made me so mad about the last few weeks that people had been applauding. Lynn went out the day after that and scored a brace.

Syd Leroux, who was never even in contention called up to camp, was showing out in scoring. They're like, all right, let me remind you. And this is what Crystal Dunn had to do a few years ago, right? When she was snubbed for selection. And then she tore up the NWSL. It was like her personal revenge tour. And I think that was the thing, combined with Nneka, that really, really hit me. Because it was like, what more can they do? And the thing that hurts so much about it is that there's so many people who can then slide in and say, well, tactically, this is why, right? Or here's the explanation. There's always an explanation. There's always contexts that were quote unquote missing, right? And it's like, I don't know if people hear how tired that sounds.

Courtney: Yeah. Nneka’s hurt. 

Amira: So was Diana!

Courtney: It’s like, others who definitely made that roster…And we know when Nneka will be back. It's not a secret. If I know [laughs] then everyone at USA Basketball knows, right? I mean, the gaslighting and the excuses – tactical, injured, you know, whatever… 

Amira: There's always going to be something that feels like a believable, completely “reasonable” reason for Black women to be marginalized. And sometimes I just want people to follow their logic. 3% of Black women have tenure, or something terrible like that. Let people follow their reasonable ass logic through. The conclusion you're going to come to is we're not worthy. We're not smart. And you know that's a damn lie. And one of the things that has happened over the last few weeks is that it was very publicly kind of being played out across spaces that we all have a foot in. And it felt so overwhelming to not only have it happening, but I know for me, the other overwhelming part was that people who never talk about this, who don't have the range, quite honestly, because it hit to public discourse, all of a sudden were like, “We need to talk about Black women in sports.” “We need to talk about Black women in the academy.” “We need to talk about Black women in journalism.”

Courtney: Hold on, hold on, hold on. There's a sound…It’s me screaming internally, [Amira laughs] like, constantly, for weeks. That's what that sound was. It’s just constantly, like, [tapping] that is like nail on the head.

Amira: Also, it’s so weird to watch something finally publicly be a conversation and then simultaneously everybody else having it. And you're looking around at other Black women, like, how on the one thing that we're very clearly experts on, everybody suddenly can be experts on it. Which is why I was like, [sighs] you know, lemme talk to Court. Because without needing to even say it, you said, whew, you said, listen. You said, girl. And that's all that needs to be said, because we can see all of the ways that they're compounding, intersecting with each other, because we see the common thread and the through line.

And I think that to return to that metaphor of the breath, it's also like the places and why we find home in each other is because those are the spots where you can fully exhale. I mean, part of this is like, how do we actually reckon with mental health needs of Black women and Black athletes and Black journalists and Black academics, that it takes accounting and it's required to understand what we have here, what we capture in a bottle when talking to each other and how cathartic this feels, because it's affirming in a way none of these of these other spaces are.

Courtney: Absolutely, absolutely.

Amira: Whew. So, where do we go from here? [laughs] What’s next? What's next? We watch these triflin ass pandemic games, you know? [Courtney laughs] Like, people are gonna keep leaving ESPN. People are gonna shuffle institutions. I'm happy for Howard, but I'm also like, Howard just last week had their dean being very extra about sexual assault in a way that is a reminder that Howard is still an institution.

Courtney: And a certain kind of institution, too.

Amira: It feels like even the wins are not satisfying because there's still not that exhale, right? There’s still just like a new system that you know you have to work through, and maybe you've made it marginally easier, but it also feels like we're jumping from one institution that will grind us up and chew us out to another. And so like, how do we find our moments of joy and self care? Like, what do I do about the fact that I feel mad anxious after I take time off for myself, because now I feel like I have to catch up, right? Like, I don't know. These are all things I don't actually expect you to solve either, unless…That would be dope if you could. [laughter] But like, I never know how to end these conversations because in many ways there's never ending, you know, the next moment of this kind of bone dead exhaustion of existing as a Black woman in the world is never far away. 

Courtney: Yeah, I don't have the answers. But one of the things that I was thinking about when you were talking about this kind of moment that we have collectively, that can't be quantified or commodified or co-opted or stolen, has been helpful for me in thinking about even in my work and life in general. Kevin Quashie’s work about the sovereignty of quiet and like Black interiority, right? So, the things that can't be leveraged or taken up on TikTok, the ways that we are with each other that is a kinship that sometimes is so global and so familiar in a way. You can go into a new space and feel that interiority that can't be bottled up. Those are the things that combat the exhaustion, things that don't have to be us constantly resisting. It's not about our active…It’s all the things that can't be taken up, where Blackness is not just about struggle. Struggle is definitely part, right? Because it's inherent to how we move in these spaces. But I've been thinking about the Black women and non-binary folks that I center, how there's something that will always be unknowable, even when I have field observations or get in the archives or do interviews. And part that interiority, I want them to keep. And sometimes we can have it together and it will never make a page–

Amira: Absolutely.

Courtney: –because there's something so beautiful and important that's happening that I want us to share it collectively. I don't want to be quoted or cited. I want us to have that moment because those are the things that I think rejuvenate the work. There are things that you and I will talk about that will never see the light of day. 

Amira: Ever. [laughs] 

Courtney: I hope our text messages don’t become the new archive, right? [laughter]

Amira: I know. [laughs]

Courtney: But I think that there's something in the quiet, the things that can't be read or repeated, that are the things that allow an exhale sometimes, that allow us to keep going and doing the work. And so the sovereignty of quiet has been feeding me in a way that again, I don't know always what that looks like, but I'm now actively searching for it. And sometimes it's laying down somewhere, and sometimes it's community and kinship, and sometimes it’s the ways that we have to hold on to things to keep ourselves together, to keep ourselves whole and to remind ourselves we are not the university. We are not Team USA. We are not UNC – whatever it is, right? And so, interiority has been my word of the day of constantly trying to hold onto something, to steal away, to resist in a way that's an active refusal of what people cannot have of me. And I think Naomi gave us that blueprint, you know, when she…There’s an act of refusal that is beautiful about quiet, about resistance. Marshawn Lynch gave us that blueprint, right? I am so influenced by athletes who have a certain language and have had to deal with this on a level I'll never understand. And so their interiority is giving me a certain language and intimacy to think about that for myself too.

Amira: Yeah, I love that. Because, you know, I found that it’s not just the every day, it's not just the stillness, but that there is actually resistance in disruption, in claiming that. And I think that for me, perhaps that is the good exhale that we can end on today, which is to thrive, or even to exist in this world is to disrupt it. Yeah. Black women.

Courtney: We all we got.