NFL
By: Zachary Draves
At a time when black history and queer history are being watered down at best and banned at worst in states such as Florida and Arkansas, 5,341 miles away in Budapest, Hungary, a proud black queer woman sprinted her way into history.
After not being able to make the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for marijuana and facing a future that seemed bleak, Sha’Carri Richardson came roaring back at the 2023 World Athletics Championships.
On Monday, she won the 100-meter final with a time of 10.65, just edging out the heavily favored Jamaican sprinters Shericka Jackson and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Prycenot. This feat not only solidifies her comeback, but also makes her a clear favorite heading into the 2024 Paris Olympics.
(Courtesy: Youtube)
This is just the latest in a string of success dating back to the Miramar Invitational in April where she ran the 4th fastest time in the 100 meters at 10.57. In May, she won at the Diamond League race in Doha, Qatar by running 10.76 seconds.
She is now expected to help carry the US back to glory after Jamaica’s fifteen-year dominance at the Olympics in track and field.
Richardson has certainly come a long way from reaching the highest of heights before experiencing the lowest of lows in 2021.
In the leadup to that year’s COVID-stricken Olympics, Richardson had experienced the loss of her mother. Through grief, she was able to win over many hearts by dominating the 100 meters in the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.
Then just as she was on the cusp of Olympic glory, she tested positive for THC, the chemical that is used in cannabis. She was subsequently suspended from competing in the Olympics and took responsibility, but added that she was using THC as a coping mechanism in dealing with the trauma of her mother’s passing.
In 2022, it seemed as if she was at a breaking point. Not only did she not make that years’ World Athletic Championships, but she was on the receiving end of criticism by some after she refused to take questions from the media during that event.
Now she is back in the fold and moving forward with brimming confidence. Not only that but she is making an implicit statement about how she and other black queer people deserve a place in history as well as to live and thrive.
(Courtesy: Tim Clayton/Corbis Via Getty Images)
The intersectional journeys of black queer communities are compounded by the effects of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and misogynoir. Sometimes in a constant struggle trying to figure out where they belong.
But history has proven that there is no black history without Bayard Rustin and there is no queer history without Marsha P. Johnson.
In Richardson’s case, she has followed suit with these trailblazers who came before her and embraced every aspect of her being. She celebrates her blackness, queerness, and womanhood with sheer uncompromising joy and exuberance.
It is that celebratory spirit that makes some feel so threatened that they take a knife and stab an innocent gay black man named O’Shae Sibley outside a gas station in New York or use the power of the state to try to write off the contributions of such greatness to serve some sort of nefarious political gain that will ultimately backfire in the end.
Richardson made her longevity very clear in an interview where she said that she is no longer afraid of the world and will continue to blaze a trail.
“It’s my time to do it for myself, the people that felt like me, and the people that look like me. I represent those people,” she said in Budapest.
Maya Angelou once said, “the more you know about your history, the more liberated you are.” In this moment, Sha’Carri Richardson is living proof of black queer excellence that deserves historical recognition and in the end to paraphrase Dr. Angelou, you may write her down in history with bitter and twisted lies, but still like dust she will rise.
