Simone Manuel (1996- ), an American swimmer, won the gold medal in the women’s 100m freestyle at the 2016 Rio Olympics. That makes her the first Black woman of any nation to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. She also won a silver for the 4x100m freestyle relay.
When she received the gold medal, she cried as they played “The Star-Spangled Banner”, the US national song. The BBC showed it live – while NBC back home was showing a tape of Russian gymnasts! The US east coast did not see it till an hour later, after midnight (and after Twitter pointed it out).
Manuel tied with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak. They swam 100 metres in 52.70 seconds, breaking the Olympic record. They both beat Cate Campbell of Australia, who holds the world record in that event and was leading the race at the halfway mark.
Oleksiak won Canada’s first gold medal at the Rio games. She is also the first person born after January 1st 2000 to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event.
But Simone Manuel’s win is a bigger deal. Not just as a Black First (we still live in that age), but because of the stereotype that “Black people can’t swim”, segregated swimming in the US and because of the times.
Manuel:
“It means a lot, especially with what is going on in the world today, some of the issues of police brutality. This win hopefully brings hope and change to some of the issues that are going on. My color just comes with the territory.”
On being a Black swimmer:
“It is something I’ve definitely struggled with a lot. Coming into the race, I tried to take [the] weight of the black community off my shoulders. It’s something I carry with me. I want to be an inspiration, but I would like there to be a day when it is not ‘Simone the black swimmer.’
“The title of black swimmer suggests that I am not supposed to win golds or break records, but that’s not true because I train hard and want to win just like everyone else.”
“Black people can’t swim” has some truth to it: Most White children in the US can swim, most Black and Latino children cannot. The idea that Blacks do not float as well in water, though, has been proved false.
Swimming pools in the US since the 1920s have become one of the most segregated spaces in the country. Just last year in McKinney, Texas, in Manuel’s own home state, a pool party was violently broken up by police going after Black swimmers (pictured below).
Manuel:
“This medal is not just for me, it’s for a whole bunch of people who have came before me and who have been an inspirational for me… Maritza [Correia], Cullen [Jones]. And it’s for all the people after me, who believe they can’t do it … And I just want to be an inspiration to others – that you can do it.”
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
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Reblogged this on Boycott.
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The suggestion that Blacks can’t swim is pretty much an American phenomenon, mostly because of disparate access like everything else.
Go to the Caribbean or West Africa, watch them skin dive & spearfish (without tanks), THEN tell me we naturally can’t swim.
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Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
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[…] Source: Simone Manuel – The Militant Negro™ […]
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Of course black people can swim! You name it, we can do it. White people just need to stay out of our way and watch more and more of us break their little records and set our own! Heck Simone Biles crushed the white competition in a sport that is usually dominated by Eastern Europeans and…the Chinese I guess.
Congrats Simone Manuel.I adore that picture of the little girl celebrating, that’s how I felt, and I’m not even a yank!
Phew, black girl magic at the Olympics 😀
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It’s the Game of The Simones Simone Manuel in swimming and Simone Biles who is slaying in gymnastics. #Blackgirlmagic
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Reblogged this on It Is What It Is and commented:
#SimoneManuel …. Honoring you and your amazing wins!!
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I thought that was pretty freaking awesome when she won. Her last 25 meters was like she had an outboard motor attached to her.
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@merrimay
“White people just need to stay out of our way and watch more and more of us break their little records and set our own!”
Ditto!
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@Mary Burrell
“#Blackgirlmagic”
Love it!
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That photo of the little black girl in front of the big flat screen is too adorable. I hope Simone Manuel continues to inspire another generation of young black girls.
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Good old NBC.
Always ready to show Black people in “perp walks” (the parading of suspected criminals), but can’t bring themselves to honor an American gold medalist who happens to be Black.
I wish I was surprised.
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In the last Olympics, when Gabby Douglas was performing her winning routine on the uneven bars, NBC was focusing on the crying white girl who had just messed up her routine.
I thought Gabby was practicing in the background. It wasn’t until later that day that we learned Gabby had scored the highest of anyone for her routine.
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““Black people can’t swim” has some truth to it: Most White children in the US can swim, most Black and Latino children cannot. The idea that Blacks do not float as well in water, though, has been proved false.”
So, does that make S. Manuel the exception that proves the rule, or that Whites always look for a ‘biological’ explanation for any perceived shortcoming from Blacks?
The celebration by Blacks indicate that a number of them actually buy these ‘explanations’.
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“Phew, black girl magic at the Olympics”
Yup!!!!!!
And props to the lovely Black Canadian female diver,.
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I’ve been wishing White people would get the f*** out of Brown folks way since forever, and you can kinda see why they don’t, cuz when they do, we tend to dominate, and not just in sports.
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Apparently, Black people can’t swim and White people can’t dance. I guess it all evens out in the end.
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It was a white Canadian psychologist who said that heavier bones prevent people of African descent from swimming like people of European descent. Guess what, I’m still ROFLMAO. Ignorance is so bliss and racism is so white.
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The two Black Texan women with the same first name have athletically debunked old negative stereotypes in two so-called non-Black sports. Two thumbs up to Simone Manuel (swimmer) and Simone Biles (gymnast).
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@ Abagond
I like how you have two significant pictures. To me, the first picture represents systematic racism/white supremacy (police brutality is definitely included in white supremacy) and the second picture represents a white supremacist’s old stereotype that has been debunked by one of our own.
This might sound strange and it’s certainly NOT to offend our gold medalist sister (Simone Manuel) but if you didn’t know any better you would think the racist McKinney cop (race soldier) is brutalizing our sister, Simone Manuel. Manuel and our sister that was violated of her constitutional rights (by the race soldier) have the same beautiful brown skin tone, body structure, and hairstyle.
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For some reason public pools bring it out in people. A lot of the debate around the refugee sexual harassment debate in Germany has focused on public pools. Some even went so far as temporarily banning refugees (who mostly are non-white by German standards).
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Whites often try to ‘scientifically’ prove that the effects of their own racism are actually due to innate deficiencies of those they’ve oppressed. Yet, as others have said, black people can do fine in any pursuit once even a single rusty hole appears in the steel obstacles put in their way. Sadly the exploits in sports largely benefit white people (advertisements, broadcast rights, ticket sales etc.) but I’m still proud of their demonstration of what they can accomplish.
Let’s not forget that Gabi Douglass had won the all-around competition in 2012 at just 16 years old. She was third in the qualifying round this year but didn’t get into the finals since gymnastics rules do not allow more than two competitors from one country in the finals. Biles and Raisman had qualified ahead of her.
Also at this olympics Michelle Carter became the first American ever to win gold in the women’s shotput. She surpassed Kiwi Valerie Adams with her last throw to deny the New Zealander a third consecutive gold medal.
Congrats to both Simone Manuel and Simone Biles.
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The film Pride about black swim coach Jim Ellis was on Centric tells the true story of how he wanted to form his swim team in the 70’s in Philadelphia with the black youth in disadvantaged communities and the racial prejudices he faced from white swim coaches and white swim teams. They have featured that film several times this week.
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It must also be remembered that Manuel didn’t just win any Olympic swimming race.
She won THE race for female swimmers. The blue riband event – The 100m freestyle,
That means she’s the fastest swimmer in the world.
Big shout out to Simone Biles in the Gymnastics too
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I’m happy about this. But whites already know and recognize that we can be great athletes. What we need are more of our people in science and economics. We need intellectual recognition, or maybe we don’t need whites at all. That’s a thought too.
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@jony
“…whites already know and recognize that we can be great athletes. What we need are more of our people in science and economics.”
Agreed.
I would venture a guess that White people already know that Black people can be great scientists, economists, attorneys and anything else. That is the reason predominantly Black school districts are underfunded, staffed with inexperienced Teach For America “teachers”, denied books, microscopes and other lab equipment, art and music classes, sports teams and sometimes hot meals in a cafeteria.
They want a social system where Black people are so handicapped by lack of education and opportunity that their only options are flipping burgers or prison
(where many “Made in America” products are produced with free or near free labor).
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Meanwhile, the Douchenozzle Media Slight Trifecta Award (Racist, Sexist, and Irrelevant Praise of already-glorified White Frat Dude all in one) goes to The San Jose Mercury News for their coverage of Simone Manuel’s achievement, as outlined by The Huffington Post, here:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57ad7acbe4b007c36e4e2184
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“They want a social system where Black people are so handicapped by lack of education and opportunity that their only options are flipping burgers or prison
(where many “Made in America” products are produced with free or near free labor).”
This sounds a bit paranoid. It was true during slavery but doubtful today. You skip over the work of Whites who devoted themselves to educating Blacks. Most Black colleges were created and staffed by Whites until recently.
“In 1882 the two women returned to Massachusetts to bid for more money and were introduced to wealthy Northern Baptist businessman John D. Rockefeller at a church conference in Ohio.[2] Rockefeller was impressed by Packard’s vision. In April 1884, Rockefeller visited the school. By this time, the seminary had 600 students and 16 faculty members. It was surviving on generous donations by the black community in Atlanta, the efforts of volunteer teachers, and gifts of supplies; many Atlanta black churches, philanthropists, and black community groups raised and donated money to settle the debt on the property that had been acquired.[10] Rockefeller was so impressed that he settled the debt on the property.[11] Rockefeller’s wife, Laura Spelman Rockefeller; her sister, Lucy Spelman; and their parents, Harvey Buel and Lucy Henry Spelman, were also supportive of the school. The Spelmans were longtime activists in the abolitionist movement. Thus, in 1884 the name of the school was changed to the Spelman Seminary in honor of Laura Spelman, John D. Rockefeller’s wife,[2] and her parents, who were longtime activists in the anti-slavery movement. Rockefeller also donated the funds for what is currently the oldest building on campus, Rockefeller Hall, which was constructed in 1886.”
Some of the most interesting work on pre-colonial African irrigation is funded by White institutions.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40929612?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5503/
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As a teenager in my small town high school in an isolated, totally white part of the country, I was taught by my high school swimming coach, who was also a science teacher, that as a factual matter black people are more dense than whites and therefore cannot float, which is why black people can’t swim. As a nerdy science kid this struck me as odd because we know for a fact that black corpses float just like white ones do, but I was too young and immature to pick up the bigotry in that statement until years later, after I left the cloister of my backwoods small town and began to see more of the world with my own eyes.
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This year’s Olympics features a couple of breakthrough African American athletes in sports that previously didn’t see much representation: Ashleigh Johnson (water polo), Simone Manuel and Simone Biles (both from Texas, by the way), Carlin Isles (Rugby).
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@gro jo
“It was true during slavery but doubtful today.”
The example you provided illuminates your point, Spelman and other private institutions of higher learning were established in the past through the philantrophy of Euro Americans.
I see this issue differently. My comment is focused on current trends in public pre-K, primary and secondary education. For the past 20 years, public education available to the masses of Black children below the college/university level has eroded to the point of near collapse. This has been done in a variety of ways:
◎A number of states have conducted hostile takeovers of local majority Black school boards in a number of cities including Newark, NJ and Detroit, MI. In many cases, the states justified their actions by citing concerns about corruption and mismanagement. Once under state control these school districts were stripped of assets, programs were defunded and experienced Black teachers fired. Two decades ago, Detroit’s school system had an operating surplus, now the state of Michigan has run the district into the ground—–with a huge budget deficit.
◎There has been a big push by the states and the Feds to deprofessionalize the teaching profession itself. One motivation is to break teachers unions and another is to cut costs. University educated teachers who pursue continuing professional development over the course of their careers command (and demand) higher salaries and benefits than fly by night Teach For America hacks who pass through the program to buff their resumes.
◎Pre-K, primary and secondary schools have become pipelines to prison for many low-income Black children. Metal detectors, zero tolerance policies, violent police roaming the halls and arrests of children (some as young as five years old) for breaking arbitrary rules have become commonplace. In the South, harsh corporal punishment is thrown into this toxic mix.
◎Finally there is the closing of public schools by the score in major urban areas such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Atlanta and Cleveland. They are usually replaced with privately owned charter schools that siphon money from the public school system into private hands. This trend has been accelerated by the Obama administration with its Race to The Top initiative which acts as a cudgel against states and local school districts that resist privatization. Many low income Black children are packed into classrooms of forty plus students.
◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎
This is not just academic to me, gro jo. I personally know Black parents who are trying to navigate this mined harbor of public school collapse. The more affluent are paying for supplementary tutoring outside of school. Some are so thoroughly disgusted by the abysmal quality of public education that they are homeschooling their children. Others are settling for public and charter schools that lack functioning science laboratories, art, music, athletics, books, cafeterias or qualified and experienced teachers.
Without a strong educational experience in primary and secondary school, it doesn’t matter how many institutions of higher learning “good White folk” support. The students themselves will not be able to make the leap to technical & trade schools/programs or college/university. Many will be consigned to a life of low wage jobs or
neo-slaveryprison.LikeLiked by 3 people
@ Melanie
WOW! They sure messed that up. Thanks for sharing.
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@Afrofem @Melanie
I can only imagine one thing that could have made that headline worse.
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@Origin
What is that one thing?
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Afrofem, nice reply. You might find this article on the subject of some use. http://prospect.org/article/myth-public-school-failure
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@Afrofem
It’s not a headline they would ever have written but the one they did write came off as so dismissive of Manuel I couldn’t help but imagine another word substituting for African-American.
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@Origin
A scant 100 years ago they would have written the first thing that popped into their heads…something ugly.
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If white Americans are so unappreciative of our efforts, then perhaps we should take our talents elsewhere. Let them have all the Michael Phelpses they want, cupping marks and all.
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@ gro jo
Most of the devolution in the school system I wrote about began after this article was written. When the article was published, school vouchers, charter schools and Teach For America were still safely in the fevered imagination of destructive “school reformers”.
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“@ gro jo
Most of the devolution in the school system I wrote about began after this article was written. When the article was published, school vouchers, charter schools and Teach For America were still safely in the fevered imagination of destructive “school reformers”.”
I know that. I linked to it because, it seems to me, that it shows how the working class, regardless of ethnicity, were robbed by both Democrats and Republicans. Studies that didn’t fit the agenda were flushed down the memory hole. Note that even when Clinton knew that the CEOs he was talking to were full of shyt, he didn’t dare contradict them. The problem wasn’t schools but economic stagnation. It still is.
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What does it say about Blacks that they line up behind the same gang who destroyed some of the progress made from 1965 to the 1990s? Maybe a little less celebration of trivialities such as Ms. S. Manuel’s feat is called for?
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@gro jo
“I linked to it because, it seems to me, that it shows how the working class, regardless of ethnicity, were robbed by both Democrats and Republicans. […] The problem wasn’t schools but economic stagnation. It still is.”
Agreed. Thanks for the clarification. I listed symptoms. You are referring to a root cause. There are others, but the economic aspect is major.
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@gro jo
LOL! We have to take our microscopic wins were we can find them.
Lesser evilism?
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Abagond, How about one on Simone Biles? Not only is the greatest gymnast of all time but has a very compelling life story, not to mention she’s a little cutie.
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“Afrofem
@gro jo
LOL! We have to take our microscopic wins were we can find them.
Lesser evilism?”
I’m still recovering from the ‘joy’ of eight years of Obama. These “Black firsts” get you every time. To Simone Manuel’s credit, her win was a real first, whereas Obama was one of many blacks who rules non-blacks in history.
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@ gro jo
What/Who do you mean exactly?
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Sorry for the typo: whereas Obama was one of many blacks who ruled non-blacks in history.” Now that I’ve corrected my error, on to the factual basis of my claim:
The 25th dynasty of Egypt 760 BC–656 BC
Abu al-Misk Kafur 946-968 CE
The Sidis of Janjira 1489-1948
Malik Ambar regent of the Nizamshahi dynasty of Ahmednagar from 1607 to 1626.
Toussaint Louverture Governor-General of Saint-Domingue 7 July 1801 – 6 May 1802
These are the most prominent.
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Oh, a number of presidents of the early Mexican Republic.
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This one claims SHE is colorblind,…
http://rio2016.fivb.com/en/volleyball/women/teams/ned-netherlands/players/celeste-plak?id=53637
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@ MinnMom
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@ the BBC
The British Broadcasting Channel is the most unbiased ‘media’ in the whole wide universe. So unbiased and un-apologetic about showing things the way it is that American Media Service providers (Cable etc) make you pay a big extra for a channel line up that includes it. I know Britain colonized countries and did some shit in the past but for having the most competent unbiased media in the world including in Asia, African, :Latin America, and of course U S of A, you got to give them big due credit for BBC.. I trust that outlet.
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BBC most unbiased major media broadcasting in existence. The British makes something of a big amends for such programming for their past colonial mistakes. Way to go British Broadcast Channel…..
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