Special Episode: Black Women Athletes Take Action

In a follow up to the special episode on Black Women Athletes speaking up, we bring you a special episode highlighting some of the recent moments of protest, organization, and leadership by Black Women athletes. Amira talks to pro softball players Kiki Stokes and A.J. Andrews about that tweet and the resulting boycott of Scrapyard softball. Then, Amira chats with Kansas State basketball player, Chrissy Carr and USC's Track star Anna Cockrell, who are leading unified efforts of black student-athletes on their respective campuses.

Transcript

Amira: Hi flamethrowers, Amira here, and I’m bringing you another special episode of Burn It All Down, centered on the voices of Black women athletes who are navigating this moment, speaking up, showing out, and pushing for change. If you haven’t checked out the first special episode that was released at the beginning of June, I highly recommend that you check it out. It features 11 interviews with Black women athletes from multiple sports at various levels speaking out about this moment. That episode also feels like eons ago, and in these few short weeks so much has changed. We have remained committed at Burn It All Down to amplifying these stories of Black women athletes, and to that end I also recommend that you check out recent interviews that extend and build on this series. In episode 162 Brenda chats with Anita Asante, Chelsea center back and Olympian, about Black Lives Matter and its effect on global football. And most recently in episode 164 Shireen chatted with the Atlanta Dream’s Renee Montgomery about her decision to step away from basketball for the year to focus on activism in Atlanta.

This special episode will focus on recent moments of protest, mobilization and leadership shown by Black women athletes at both the collegiate and professional levels. Later in the episode I’ll chat with two college athletes who are working to mobilize Black student athletes on their respective campuses, but first we start with softball. Last week on June 22nd pro softball was set to return. The Scrap Yard Fastpitch and the USSA Pride met on the field, ready to kick off a seven game series that was going to usher in an entire summer of head to head matchups. While the players took to the field in excitement, unbeknownst to them the GM of Scrap Yard had tweeted a photo of them standing for the national anthem, tagging President Trump along with both teams in it with the words, “Hey @realDonaldTrump! Pro Fastpitch being played live. Everyone respecting the FLAG.”

Response to that tweet was swift. Black players spoke up and refused to play. White teammates stood in solidarity. All 18 members of Scrap Yard walked out of the organization, formed their own new team, and ushered in a much-needed conversation about racism in softball. I sat down with Kiki Stokes, one of two Black softball players on Scrap Yard, and the only Black player in the locker room when that tweet was sent. Here’s Kiki describing what went down.

Kiki: You know, we’re all getting out of the dugout, we had lost the game, so it didn’t make it any better. But we’re getting out of the dugout, and as we’re walking into the locker room I noticed our media director, she was in the bathroom but I could kind of tell she was crying and I didn’t really know what was going on so I kind of just let it be for a little bit. I sat down in my chair and I’m looking at my phone and I get a text message from Kelsey Stewart and it was the screenshot of the tweet. Immediately I kind of just froze. I didn’t know what to think, I was trying to comprehend it on my own. As I sit down more and more people are coming into the locker room, I was one of the first people, and everybody is kind of looking at their phone like how I looked at my phone. I know everybody else sees what I’m seeing.

As the moment just keeps building on itself I just broke down. I couldn’t think of anything else. I just felt betrayed, I felt hurt. Then my teammates on top of it are just going in, they’re angry, they are fuming, talking amongst each other, trying to console me, make sure that I’m okay. Not too long after all of us had gotten into the locker room our coaches came in so when they came in the locker room, our head coach, he was in tears as well. He didn't even know where to start. He apologized to me, kept apologizing to me. Everybody was just silent in that moment, it was a very, very dark place in that locker room – the feeling of betrayal, of embarrassment, anger, so many different emotions.

Amira: While Kiki was in her locker room, friend of the show AJ Andrews, who played for the other team, the Pride, was leaving the field, heading into her locker room, and learning of the tweet.

AJ: We were out on the field, excited, planning on meeting together as a team that night to maybe go eat. Then we get in the locker room, and for me it was very stunning because all of a sudden one of my teammates just said, “Did you see the tweet?” I had no idea what she was speaking on, and as soon as I jump on Twitter the first person that I saw was Natasha Watley and her response to it. Natasha Watley is an icon in softball, an Olympian, and she is really the idol for many Black softball players because she was one of the first that we truly had to see as a representation, as somebody that we felt we could be like playing at the highest level. She was just completely appalled and upset by what was put out. Then once I read what was put out by the management for Scrap Yard, it was just like a gut punch, you know? I can only say this from the perspective of being on the other team right? I’m not even on the team that this happened to.

But just to see that tweet being put out was so disappointing, and especially after the team had put out a statement saying how much they represent and appreciate inclusivity and want to hear all voices, to then be reduced to just one person’s voice and opinion that completely is beside the point and completely misrepresents what Black Lives Matter is about and what kneeling is about and how this movement is truly trying to change how people view social justice in this country and reform that. For someone to truly just ignore how that would affect not just the Black athletes but the opinions of anyone on that team that does not share the same…That she decided to create this opinion for everyone, you know? It was very very disappointing. I was infuriated. It made me, in that locker room, all I wanted to do was check on Kiki, because Kelsey Stewart was a part of that team but she had left, so I knew that Kiki was the only Black athlete in that locker room, and I had been the only Black athlete in this locker room before, and I had to know that she was in a very peculiar situation, and I wanted to be there but everything was kind of closed off. In that moment she was really the only thing that was on my mind.

Amira: Meanwhile, Kiki and her Scrap Yard teammates began to talk about what to do.

Kiki: As we’re sitting there we began to kind of talk through what our next steps are. At that point my teammates are, “Kiki, what do you wanna do?” I was very clear, “I don’t know, but I don’t wanna be here.” I can’t play for somebody or an organization that doesn’t stand up for me, that's how I felt in the moment. Monica Abbott had asked if the GM could come in there so that we could talk to her. I kind of sat there in just sheer shock, and she walked in and first thing she started talking about was justifying what she said. At that moment, that was when my teammates started speaking up for me. Monica Abbott, Cat Osterman, Sam Fischer, there were so many of my teammates that literally just spoke, did not let her get out any words, but just the anger was all coming out.

Then she started mentioning the “all lives matter” and that was when I kind of blacked out, I don’t really remember anything else that she said because I just knew that she did not understand where I was coming from, she did not get it. I’m sitting here crying; she never apologized to me, she never said anything to me. She was looking at everybody else but me. She kept talking, kept talking, and then she mentioned that this was an uncomfortable situation for her, and at that point I walked out. I walked out of the locker room because she failed me, failed my people at that point. I walked out and I don’t know what really was said after I left the locker room, but I know I left the locker room and about 2 minutes later everyone else had cleaned out the locker room and were right behind me.

AJ: You have these people that have these Black athletes on their team, but have these hidden agendas and have these opinions that truly are a direct reflection of the oppression and the pain that the Black athletes on that team have to go through day to day. It doesn’t make any sense. I hope that people understand why I was never impressed by the black boxes, I was never impressed by those idle statements of solidarity, because at the end of the day what exactly are you doing? Anyone can just write up a quick three sentence post, but how are you showing that you really truly want to change something and truly want to move the needle forward? I hope this is another circumstance like that where you see that there is so much work that needs to be done in softball. There’s absolutely no reason all the talent that is out there that Black athletes have in this sport that there should be one particular professional athlete on that Scrap Yard team that is a Black woman and has to sit there and has to speak for how all Black people feel – that’s not her responsibility. It’s not, and it shouldn’t be that. For her to have to feel so isolated and so singled out, and to not feel as if she has a voice, to me that's really upsetting.

Kiki: It was a very powerful moment for me because I felt so isolated and I felt so alone, but at the same time my teammates went to bat for me. My teammates and staff and coaches, they all went to bat for me, they didn’t let her have the last word. They just followed everything that I wanted to do. Us softball players, we play for little to no money at times, and as professionals it hurts to know that we just walked away from our job and something that we love, but at the same time we won’t stand for something that doesn’t stand for us. So being able to walk out and understand that, at the time, we might never even pick up a softball again this summer, but I think that we’ve come together.

It just kind of shows that we as women, we can be so powerful when we take a stand for things and we stand up for the right things. We can move mountains. The fact that we all came together in that moment and we realized that this moment was something bigger and it was more than softball, I think it was the understand that I am so much more than softball. The things that I can bring to the table go way beyond softball. The people that I reach, the connections that I get to make, those are the important parts to the game for me, and to be able to just put aside the game in itself, to understand that I have so much pride in my culture, so much pride in my history of my people, of just being me, I have so much pride in that. I can step away and know that just because I’m walking away from something that I believe in doesn’t mean that I might not get another chance to do something.

For me in that moment, I was just feeling really like I matter. I matter way too much for someone to just be able to say this and almost, like, get away with it. So walking away, it was very easy for me in that moment because, again, it’s not like I am making all of this money. It’s never about the money, but my life just means so much more. I’ve had my ups and downs, I’ve had times where I feel really empowered and times when I honestly feel just really sad and trying to figure out how to come with things. But nonetheless, I think it’s been an amazing learning experience for myself to be able to educate others and myself as well. Moving forward there's a lot of things in the works right now. We want to play as a unit, we just don’t wanna play for the Scrap Yard Dawgs organization or the GM.

Amira: When I talked to AJ a few weeks ago for the special episode, one of the points that she made most passionately was compelling white softball players to stand up and stand in solidarity. Given the actions of Scrap Yard, I asked AJ if this was the type of solidarity that she had envisioned.

AJ: Right. For me when I heard what they wanted to do, I was completely in support, and I thought that it was extremely commendable. I honestly was quite surprised and not in the sense where I’m questioning anyone on that team’s character, but I just feel like to have that level of solidarity shown where an entire team decides to walk away due to the misrepresentation – yes, of course of their own voices, but just the entirety of the fact that Black lives should matter a little bit more, and it’s not about the flag, it’s never been about the flag. It was very, very heartwarming to see. You just don’t see that all the time in so many different leagues, and softball has never really been one of the sports that you would consider being on the forefront of social or racial justice causes.

Amira: This moment seems to have really galvanized parts of the softball community. In the wake of Scrap Yard’s actions and the tweet, support for the team came pouring in from fellow players, from Olympians, from former players across the spectrum of the sport. This has been applauded by the Black softball players I talked to, but they also caution that softball still has a lot of work to do.

AJ: I’m excited that people are standing up, you know, there’s a lot of allyship when it came to the statement being put out, but my challenge to that is: okay, what’s next? You realize this is an issue, you realize that these Black athletes being able to hit a ball was placed above their right to walk down the street without getting harassed, their right to go to the store without being shot just based off the color of their skin. You know that’s an issue, so now what’s next, right? What is it that you’re going to do to continue to help move and force the issue so that anytime anything like this happens there’s 4-5 Black athletes in that locker room and not just one having to take the brunt of it all.

Kiki: I just hope that our sport can continue to grow in diversity, and for our white counterparts to acknowledge that as well, be able to see where they lack or where they have these biases, predetermined biases of what a softball player should look like. I hope to see it change at all levels – collegiately, professionally, and even at the select level. I’m just hoping that it turns for the better, and I think now more than ever we have the attention of the softball community and this is where we’re gonna make our biggest impact.

AJ: We’re moving forward to educate, we’re moving forward to change the course of what softball looks like in this country. Softball is no longer going to be a sport that just sits by and we just say that we are inclusive while you still don’t have one Black athlete on your team. What are you doing to change that? What are you doing to truly prove that inclusivity? What are you doing to try to make sure that these Black athletes feel safe on these teams and feel like they have a voice and feel like that can speak?

Kiki: I want a little girl that looks like me to be able to say that this isn’t just a white sport, that this is a sport that anybody can play and that I can be comfortable in my shoes, that I don’t have to be a slapper, I don’t have to be fast, I don’t have to be an outfielder, I can be anything I wanna be when it comes to this game if I work hard enough and I put the time in, I can do whatever I want to do. That’s what I want it to look like for little girls that look like me, because growing up there was just a stigma of if you’re Black you have to be A, B, and C. I don’t want it to look like that.

AJ: This is so much bigger than softball, it’s bigger than ball. It’s not about that. At the end of the day it’s about the fact that I wanna be able to walk outside and not have to worry about if I’m gonna be hurt or if something’s gonna happen to me based on the color of my skin more than I wanna get on base and get a hit in a game. If someone can’t understand that, if someone can’t comprehend that, then I don’t really know what it is there is to talk about. I really really how that that is what is gonna be taken from everything here, that no matter what happens, whether you’re the only Black person on that team, you push forward and you make a difference. You push forward, you make a difference, and you bring the next one along. One of my favorite quotes to say is: if they won’t give you a seat at the table, build you own. Continue to work towards that. We have so much power as athletes, more than we realize. We have so much power in our voice more than we realize. If we just understand that and know that we can move that forward, you can truly not only drive change but you can truly create a movement. I just want these young Black and brown girls to know their power and to see what it is that is happening and taking place right now, and know that wherever they are, whether it’s little league, travel ball, high school, college, professional – they have the ability and the opportunity to do the same, and don’t let anyone take your voice or make you feel small.

Amira: Last night, a week to the day Connie May sent out that ignorant tweet, Kiki Stokes and her teammates took the field again – not wearing Scrap Yard, that won’t happen, but in a newly-formed team they’re calling This Is Us. The teammates wore black jerseys with This Is Us on the front, and names of Black softball players on the back. For more information about This Is Us you can check out thisisussoftball.com. There you’ll see a video from Kiki; there’s a statement from the entire team, information about the athletes, and there’s also a link to donate. Any support that you can muster for this team is greatly appreciated as they’re “trying to continue to play they game [they] love while using their platform to raise awareness, empower young women, and unite the softball community.”

Connie May’s Twitter fingers are not the only ignorant tweets burning athletes into action this week. A Kansas State student and keyboard warrior’s ignorant, racist tweet has inspired K State players and Black athletes to stand together in solidarity and demand the university deal with this incident and other issues of systemic racism at the school. I catch up with Chrissy Carr, a women’s basketball player at Kansas State, and one of the athletes leading the charge.

Chrissy: I got on Twitter and I looked at the tweet and it was a student that had decided to tweet, “Congratulations to George Floyd on being one month drug free” after it’s been a month of his passing. That one struck a little bit closer to home as I’m from Minneapolis, but only because, I mean, if you're just a simple human being who has feelings you would feel that tweet as being disgusting. Just the way that he called out for his mother, the way that he begged for his life in that video, I wouldn’t say that to anybody’s mother, anybody’s brother, anybody’s sister. For me personally, I’ve lost a sister, so I know how a death in the family feels, and I wouldn’t want anybody mocking somebody’s death whether they were hooked to drugs, whether they were hooked to alcohol, whether they just died of natural causes or a freak accident, I wouldn’t want anybody mocking it.

So when I saw some athletes starting to take stands…I saw one football player tweet – well, somebody tweeted that athletes were taking a stand and I was like, oh, I haven't seen that yet, but that’s great. But they took down their tweets, so I texted one of the football players and I was like, hey, just curious – I saw your tweet about how you were “not going to play for a university that stands with this and I think they need to do something about it” – why did you take it down? He was like, “My uncle told me to.” So I went into the gym and I walked up to my dad and I said, you know, I think this is something that I need to stand for. I’ve been on the front lines of a lot of protests, I’ve been on the news talking about this issue and if I’m going to be an activist for this type of movement then I need to be in it 100%. My dad has always taught me to do things 100% and don’t do it 50%, 80%, 99%, you gotta full send it. So I just told him, I said I refuse to play for a university that will stand for this type of action. He kind of looked and me and he was like, okay, I want you to know I support you all the way, but I do feel like you doing it by yourself isn’t going to speak that much volumes, I feel like you need to get all athletes onboard.

So I made a call to Julian Jones; he’s kind of the head of running stuff with our Black student athletes here at K State University, and I called him and said, hey, I would like to host a Zoom meeting at 1:00 today and he was like, “Alright.” He put it together and we got all the athletes on there and we started just talking about it, ranting about it. Then we started talking about a statement that we were gonna come out with. I went ahead and typed the statement, copy and pasted onto a Word document, screenshotted it and sent it to all the athletes. Every single one posted it, I wasn’t the only one who posted it. Some kids on the football team…Well, the majority of the football team posted it. We had soccer post it, we had women’s basketball, volleyball, baseball, everybody started posting it. As soon as that hit, the whole of Twitter was just going crazy. That's just one thing that we just decided as student athletes, that we are held to a standard where we’re not allowed to tweet certain things that offend people and we have to be super cognizant about our fans and about our student body as a whole, but our student body can’t be cognizant of our student athletes? So we’re not gonna stand for the university or put on a jersey for a university that doesn’t see how this affects us as well, since we have to be so cognizant of our fan base.

I do hold the quote “more than an athlete” really close to my heart because I feel like outside of just being an African American woman I am a woman with depression, I struggle with anxiety, I am more than a person who just dribbles a basketball every single day, and I am more than just the name on the back of my jersey and the name on the front of my jersey. So I just felt that it was needed to have. Manhattan, Kansas is such a small town compared to what I’m from originally, I’m from Minneapolis, and so I just felt like our fans needed to see that and understand that outside of just our little sports bubble that we have here and that we think that everything is just great. Just because it doesn’t happen in Manhattan doesn’t mean it’s not affecting us as students. I am a Black woman – you should see my struggles and understand them and you should educate yourself on what’s going on in this world rather than turning a blind eye to it.

Amira: I asked Chrissy about some of the internal and external reactions to their statement of solidarity, as well as what she considered the role of the Black athlete and the power and the possibilities of Black athletic labor solidarity to be in this moment.

Chrissy: Yeah, I mean from a teammate to teammate standpoint our teammates and a lot of teammates…I mean, football basically stayed on the Zoom call for three hours after we posted the stuff to get their other teammates to post the same thing to stand with them – not only agree with them, but actually sit out of stuff including Kansas State with them. So I thought that was pretty cool to note, they stayed on that Zoom call. Some of the football guys were like, “Yeah, some people got cussed out but we all got on the same page, we will walk this walk together.” I thought that was pretty amazing. My teammates, personally, they all have supported us. It’s hard because we’re in a weird time right now where we haven’t started any practice and stuff and we have a lot of teammates halfway across the country due to COIVD, but they definitely have shown their support with us. All of the coaches throughout the university have made a statement that they are 100% in support of what's going on and that they will support us not playing and not practicing until this is resolved.

But I do feel like with COVID and everything like that it’s made the world take a big pause with their life and it really has opened up everybody’s eyes to see what’s really really going on for what it is. I feel like within that we needed to take a pause within our athletics and our busy life to really understand how these athletes are being affected, and as things are starting to start back up what’s a better time to take an even bigger pause and an even bigger eye opener than this? Because I know darn well that I would not feel comfortable with that guy who tweeted that out coming to my sporting event games, nor would I feel comfortable with him going to my fellow student athletes that I consider friends, that I consider brothers, that I consider people that I love and care about; I wouldn’t feel comfortable with people like him attending our sporting events or any event at Kansas State.

I just feel like we have such a big eye on us that they don’t want us to speak about these things and they don’t want us to speak about politics, but I just thought that we could use that against them. We do have such big platforms, and people do keep an eye on us a lot. I mean, when ESPN sent out a notification to everyone’s phone I kept getting screenshots like, “Chrissy, you did it! You did it! Everyone’s seeing it.” I’m not gonna say that that was a good feeling, because it shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t have to put my career on hold and my career on the line and my scholarship on the line for some ignorant person who wanted to tweet out a joke about somebody’s death. That goes for a lot of people, that our football players, our men’s basketball players, any player that puts on a K State jersey or any player at all should have to put their life on hold to get people to understand where they’re really coming from.

You have to think of the people who attend Kansas State too that are students of color that have to go through this too that may not have the platform that you have but would like to feel protected too and would like to feel heard too. I’m doing this for you guys, I’m doing this for my children that don’t have to grow up in a world that I grew up in and had to see this kind of stuff. I’m doing this from my brother, I’m doing this for my father, I’m doing this for my uncles and aunts, I’m doing this for my friends. Honestly after I’ve been tweeting a lot of stuff and doing protests and stuff, I see that a lot of things that people can only take shots at are my race and my gender. I just think of that as, you know, if you feel like that’s what you have to use to try to attack me and tear me down, I’m okay with that, because you keep reminding me that we’re not where we need to be yet, and I’m just gonna keep going.

That’s what I would advise everyone to do, is just whenever they look at all those nasty posts about women, “I don’t know WNBA” and “yeah, please, if you stop playing the university’s gonna lose so much money” and all this stuff, and it’s like, you know, that's okay if you wanna crack those jokes and do all that stuff, but you came across my message. You saw it. You probably shared it with other people, and those people probably shared it with other people. At the end of the day you’re still reminding me that we aren’t where we need to be a I’m just gonna keep going and keep fighting and I’m gonna keep pushing, because I know we’re not gonna be perfect, but I’m gonna try to be damn near as close to perfect as I can.

Amira: As Chrissy and other K State students started to mobilize, I wanted to check in with Anna Cockrell from USC. Anna has been on the front lines of leading the charge at the University of Southern California to mobilize Black student athletes, and they actually formed an organization for Black student athletes. If you need any other indication that Anna is tough as hell, she runs the 400m hurdles, which I consider one of the hardest track and field events. Of course, she was our badass woman of the week last week. So I caught up with Anna about what it was like to form this organization for Black students at USC.

Anna: The catalyst for all of this was the murder of George Floyd. I think all of us, we’ve all been aware of Black Lives Matter for a while, but George Floyd, I think it just came during this time when we’re all at home, sports aren’t happening, we’re physically distant from each other but still trying to be connected, there’s this awful, this horrific video…So, the track team at USC, we’ve been talking about it, and people on the team, some of us have been going out protesting, and we were emotional like a lot of other people. So I ended up reaching out to our head coach who’s a Black woman, and I just said to her, hey, are we gonna hear anything from the administration? Can we expect to hear something, or they’re gonna be opposed? What’s going on? Because you start seeing all these corporations making statements but USC hadn’t said anything.

For anybody in college athletics, you know that they kind of over-communicate with you, they send you emails all the time. There’s this app called Teamworks, they message us through Teamworks all the time about anything from practice to a mandatory training to whatever, so it felt kind of off that there was nothing about the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and that there was just this silence. It was a very clear that a lot of us were in pain. So I had been posting some stuff on my Instagram and then some Black student athletes from other teams were reaching out. I realized I’m very fortunate to be in track and field because there's a lot of Black kids on that team. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like in a different sport, because there’s sports at USC where there’s 1 or 2 Black kids. Then I talked to my head coach again and she was like, “Let’s get a meeting.” I was like, yeah, let’s do it.

So basically I just started DMing everybody on Instagram whether I knew them very well or not, texting all the Black student athletes I knew, and then there’s a lot of interest from coaches and administrators as well. It started as just this open forum, and it was a Zoom call for people to just get in and say what they wanted to say and talk about how they felt. As I had been going around DMing people I think a lot of us had the same idea about creating some kind of organization, but there had just never been enough energy for it, which is terrible, but that’s the reality. So I’m messaging all these people and in part of the meeting there were like 2 or 3 different people who said, “We need an organization,” whether it’s for Black women who are student athletes or Black student athletes, Black student athletes and allies, we want something.

So then we had the meeting and at the end I’m like, “What do you guys think? Some people have said this…” A woman named Sade from the soccer team was very adamant about it, and it was unanimous from the people who were there – we need this, we wanna do it. So we came up with some different names, voted on a name, and from then on it’s been non-stop meeting, figuring out who we are as an organization, what’s our mission, what are we striving to do, what change do we wanna see from USC Athletics, and then just also trying to be very intentional about aligning ourselves with the existing Black organizations at USC. There’s a Black Student Assembly, there’s CBCSA which is the Center for Black Cultural Student Affairs. So we wanted to really be a part of the fabric and make the statement that yeah, we’re student athletes, but we’re Black people first.

I think there had been kind of a lack from student athletes – myself included, you know? – we weren’t as involved as we should’ve been. Whether that’s by accident or by design, because of practice, classes, all that kind of stuff, I think we had been off on our own little athletic bubble for a long time. This really feels like the moment where where because we’re athletes and because a lot of us have some sort of a platform now that the average student might not, it feels like a waste to not use it. It honestly feels to me like a betrayal if we sit back silently and don’t join with our people and advocate for change not only at USC but beyond.

Amira: After forming the United Black Student Athletes Association at USC, Anna emailed a statement on behalf of the organization that said, “We are not student athletes that happen to be Black, but Black students who happen to be athletes.” The statement also outlined 12 specific changes that the UBSAA would like to see from the athletic departments in the university. I really encourage you, it’s worth the read to read all of them, but here Anna breaks down just a few points contained in that statement.

Anna: Basically, the list of initiatives, the first thing on that list…We didn’t put numbers on it because we didn’t want it to seem like one thing was more important than the next, I think we were very intentional about the presentation of it. But the first thing on that list is that we wanted the athletic department to state Black lives Matter, to explicitly say that. That was kind of directly in reaction to the response that they had had up until that point. There was this Instagram post on USC Athletics and this was the first communication we kind of got from the department following the murder of George Floyd. It was this photoshopped image they had used from Martin Luther King Day of Black and white student athletes from different sports photoshopped like they all kind of had their arms around each other, then they added the words to the graphic, “Be the change” and “We fight on as one” or something like that. I really can only speak for myself but a lot of us felt like that was frustrating because what was the point of even posting that if you’re not gonna address the reason for posting? You’re gonna just vaguely say “Be the change.”

So the most important thing for us was, you know, acknowledge what’s happening. Say Black Lives Matter. Acknowledge that we’re in pain. So that’s something that actually happened, but the other things on that list, one of them is consideration of Black candidates for staff positions in the athletic department. During this process we went through all the different departments within athletics and honestly it was shocking how many had no Black staff or only one. I mean, especially glaring was sports psychology. There were no Black psychologists in athletics. There’s one athletic trainer who’s Black. In Sports Information there’s nobody who’s Black. In strength and conditioning there’s one Black strength and conditioning coach, but he only works with football. You look around in the department and it’s like, yeah, there’s a whole bunch of Black student athletes but where are the Black people in leadership positions? There are some, but not nearly enough, and there are too many departments where there’s nobody Black.

So a commitment to considering Black candidates, and not using the excuse “well, there’s nobody qualified” because there are, you know? There’s Black psychologists out there. Not using that excuse and then committing to training Black student athletes who want to get into this field, who’ve exhausted their eligibility, giving them some sort of scholarship, endowing a scholarship for people who wanna pursue that and letting them rotate into different positions within athletics is really important because not only would that benefit USC but it’s gonna benefit everybody who says there’s not enough qualified Black people for these athletic department positions.

Other things we had on there; USC actually had a form of student athlete government or student athlete advisory council at USC, it’s called Trojan Athletic Senate, and at times TAS – is for short what we call it – has not felt very representative and so one of the things we really wanted was TAS needs to restructure and commit to being representative, because they are the organization that most directly has the athletic director and the athletic department’s ear. If only certain students from certain sports are getting their voices heard, it’s not right. I think that’s evident by the fact that TAS still hasn’t said…They have an Instagram, but they haven’t posted Black Lives Matter. They haven’t made any statement. I think it kind of shows where their priorities are and what happens when you don’t have enough Black people in those roles.

One other thing that I do wanna say is we wanted USC to work with CBCSA and the Black Alumni Association at USC to endow scholarships for Black students who aren’t athletes, because yeah we’re important whatever whatever but it’s about the Black experience at USC regardless of if you play sports or not. I think that that was one of the points that I’m most proud of that we made because, like I said earlier, it’s not just about the Black student athlete experience, it’s about everybody Black who’s affected by USC, who’s involved with the institution. So that’s a point I’m very proud of that we wrote and that we put a lot of time and thought into and that we talked to people from CBCSA and BSA about just asking how can we stand in solidarity with y’all and how can we support y’all, and they were fans of that.

Amira: Anna and I also chatted about the effects of COVID on this moment and the mental health concerns that can arise when you’re juggling both concerns about a global pandemic and racial injustice and a burgeoning revolution.

Anna: I think the main way the pandemic has affected everything is that for student athletes it’s time, because normally I’d be coming off of NCAA championships and this would be Olympic trials and then ideally getting ready for the Games. So if this had been a year without a pandemic my life would’ve been all track all the time right now, and the people who play fall sports, they would’ve been in the thick of their preseason training. I think from a time perspective I’m still working out and stuff but it’s different when you’re working out for a season or for a meet that’s not until March vs. the Olympics. So I think it’s freed us all up and I think so many of us are looking for some kind of social connection because we don’t get to be, a lot of people, in person when we’re social distancing. I think it improved the relationships within the organization at USC because I didn’t have to know the volleyball girls because I had my track team and I was around them all the time. But now I’m not around them all the time and we get on a Zoom call and I think all of us are more open to forming relationships, because I think we’re all lacking that right now.

But yeah, I also think that because of the safety risk and the health risk that coronavirus poses, at least at USC, they’re more open to listening to student athletes about it in general because if we come back and the protocols aren’t properly thought out that’s our lives at risk. So I think that there’s already kind of this idea that, okay, we need to be listening about coronavirus and then, you know, the revolution is kicking into high gear and they’re already listening. So it’s okay, okay, well now you can listen to this too! Especially with how COVID-19 has affected the Black community in the US. And that was something else we highlighted, you know, it’s disproportionately affecting our community so we need to be listened to and we need a Black psychologist, because there’s a lot of psychological pressure on Black people right now. I think when I first got started with organizing the Black student athletes at USC and the nonblack allies, it’s always very labor intensive but I wasn’t doing a good job of managing my time and taking care of myself. I was kind of putting what felt like every waking moment into getting stuff together for the org, so the first couple of weeks it was all adrenaline, energy, it was awesome. But then eventually it was like, I’m exhausted.

And right at that point where I was starting to feel that was when this great group of other student athletes came in and they were like, hey, give us some of the labor, give us some of the load. So we’re formalizing our leadership structure tomorrow, actually; we have our kind of voting process completed. It’s been really great from just the perspective of seeing our organization come together, our leadership come together. But it’s a constant battle…It feels like every time you turn on the news or any time you’re Twitter it’s somebody else’s name trending or it’s some other thing that’s happened that’s just devastating – or Tamir Rice’s birthday was the other day, and every time I see a picture of just his sweet little face it breaks my heart. You know, it’s a constant battle to, I guess, stay in a good mental space and to manage energy and to allow myself to feel all the things I need to feel while still being productive, if that makes sense.

Amira: Lastly, we talked about what it meant to be a Black woman, to be a Black woman athlete, to be a Black woman at college, just existing in the year 2020 in the month of June which just felt filled to the brim with misogynoir and just exhausting for so many of us. So I wanted to check in with Anna about how she’s navigating this moment in sports and just in the world as a Black woman.

Anna: That’s something I think about often and especially when I think about this moment as a continuation of other revolutionary moments, other protest movements. We talked before we started recording about the 1960s and how college athletes were very involved. It’s funny because last year I did my undergrad thesis on Smith and Carlos, a discourse analysis and all that stuff, and during the course of doing my thesis I had started reading about Wyomia Tyus who also ran track and also protested at the Games and also was young and in college but, you know, her contribution basically has gotten forgotten. I started all my research too late to switch my thesis to her, but for me when all this stuff started happening and then so many Black women from USC had been really really involved with what we’re doing with the UBSAA.

It almost feels for me like we’ve gotta right the wrongs of the past because Black women got denied a seat at the table in white society and Black women got denied a seat at the table when Black people started creating revolution because patriarchy and racism combine in an insidious way to uniquely affect Black women. It’s something that I think about often and that with my actions and by really trying to include Black women and letting our labor pay homage to the women who came before us who were denied the opportunities. But I guess to answer how it feels, sometimes it’s frustrating because I think as Black women we get policed in many ways, we get policed by white society and by Black men about how we behave, how we talk…The Noname/J Cole thing is a great example of that, you know?

It’s just frustrating to be fighting so many battles simultaneously, and a lot of the time I think it feels like we’re the only ones who understand each other, you know? Black men don’t totally understand – some of them get it, but not all. White women try, but they don’t totally understand. So yeah, I dunno. I feel immense pride about being a Black woman and standing on the shoulders of Black women who did the labor at a time that was much harsher to them. But I still feel that frustration of how do I enter this room, how do I move in this space, what’s the right tone to take that I’m ignored, so that I’m just not written off as a shrill angry Black woman who’s mad at the world for whatever, you know?

But like I said, at the same time…Candice Denny, she plays volleyball at USC, we didn’t really know each other at all and now we text every day just over the course of creating UBSAA and working together. I feel very good and very optimistic about the relationships that I’ve formed with other Black women in this moment and it’s important that we’ve been able to provide for each other. Just seeing Black women be able to lean on each other makes me feel better when I’m frustrated about the nonsense that we go through. But yeah, I dunno. It’s a beautiful experience but it’s tough. What’s gotten me through is having a mom who’s always told me that I’m a brilliant beautiful Black woman and the relationships I have with Black women, but as a Black woman who’s also an athlete it can be frustrating at times to fight and feel like nobody’s fighting for you.

Amira: Thank you for listening to this special episode of Burn It All Down on Black women athletes speaking up and taking action. I would like to thank Kiki and AJ and Anna and Chrissy for taking the time to speak with me and share their stories, and for the work that they’re doing. Please support them in any way that you can, I’ll drop some links of ways to amplify and support the various things that they are working on. As far as for us, please keep tuning in to Burn It All Down for more stories from Black women athletes, of course, from around the world of sport. Just a reminder, you’ll be able to find show notes and a transcript for this special episode along with all of our other episodes up on our website, BurnItAllDownPod.com. Of course, find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. As always, flamethrowers: burn on, not out. We’ll see you soon.

Shelby Weldon