Dick Pound: Shut up or stay home: Olympians who speak out in Beijing ‘will be excluded’
Two quick things in response to this article: (1) Who made Dick Pound the sole moral authority to dictate what athletes with a moral/social conscience should do in response to the issues surrounding Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Summer Olympics? Yes, there are rules in place to deal with Olympians who use the podium or the Games as a political platform. Rule 51, Subsection 3 states that “No kind of demonstration or political, religious, or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” Fair enough. Rules are rules. But (a) the athletes will clearly be informed of these rules and can make autonomous decisions about whether to follow them or not. Dick, it’s a bit of a grandstand move to issue your typical “obey, or else …” warning; (b) the article suggests that this is to deter the kind of “demonstration” still famous after the 1968 Games in Mexico City. As such, I thought it would be appropriate to correct Gary Kingston that this “salute” was a bit more than simply an effort to “advance political beliefs.”
(2) To do that, I thought it would be only fitting to hear it from Harry Edwards:
As we have mentioned many times, the Olympic games are political, if nothing else. The fact that all participating nations do not compete under a single flag, the Olympic flag, but under their respective national flags, heightens their political flavor. … The Star Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States of America, was to be the focal point of the victory stand protests [by the members of the Olympic Project for Human Rights]. It has been felt for many years among the more determined segments of the black liberation movement that the Star Spangled Banner was a monument to hypocrisy of America. For the black man in America, the national anthem has not progressed far beyond what it was before Francis Scott Key put his words to it–an old English drinking song. For in America, a black man would have to be either drunk, insane, or both, not to recognize the hollowness in the anthem’s phrases. To expose this hypocrisy, we intended to inject a small bit of truth and honesty in the name of black dignity into the 1968 Olympic games. …
Then came the victory ceremonies for the 200-meter dash. Tommie Smith, the gold medalist, and John Carlos, the bronze medalist, had made it crystal clear that they intended to go through with their planned protest at the victory stand. Subtle attempts at intimidating the two had been made by members of both the U.S. Olympic Committee and the U.S. track and field coaching staff. But Carlos and Smith would not bend. They climbed to the victory stand shoeless, each wearing a black glove. Smith had a black scarf tied around his neck. They were joined on the victory stand by Peter Norman, the silver medalist from Australia, who wore the official badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights to underscore his support of the black liberation struggle. The men were presented with their medals and each turned toward the flag of the country representing the gold medal winner. The U.S. National Anthem was played. Smith and Carlos immediately raised their gloved fists and bowed their heads. In a taped interview with Howard Cosell, Smith explained the pair’s protest gestures. He stated, “I wore a black right-hand glove and Carlos wore the left-hand glove of the same pair. My raised right hand stood for the power in black America. Carlos’ raised left hand stood for unity of black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power. The black scarf around my neck stood for black pride. The black socks with no shoes stood for black poverty in racist America. The totality of our effort was the regaining of black dignity.” Smith later confided to me that the gesture of the bowed head was in remembrance of the fallen warriors in the black liberation struggle in America–Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others.
The impact of the protest was immediate. The U.S. Olympic Committee, acting hastily and rashly, warned all other U.S. athletes, black and white, that “severe” penalties would follow any further protests. Smith and Carlos were given 48 hours to get out of Mexico and were suspended from the Olympic team (Edwards, 1969, pp. 102-104).
