Hypocrisy of cancel culture
The wrong things all too often are canceled in our culture
Tmaybe
ommie Smith and John Carlos have said they do not regret the singular act that got them canceled more than five decades before the term “cancel culture” was coined. h As “The Starspangled
Banner” you happened. h The played remember and when an international TV audience watched, the two young, Black men wearing single black gloves bowed their heads and thrust fists into the air on the podium after the men’s 200-meter sprint at the 1968 Mexico City
Olympics. h Maybe you’ve read about it, it iconic moment was
They were not the first Black people to fall victim to such undeserved treatment.
Thanks to a photo captured by “Life” magazine photographer John Dominis.
The act and the photo made Smith and Carlos heroes to those who saw their actions for what they were: a callout of American segregation and racism. Others painted them as crazed Black Power radicals bent on embarrassing this great nation.
Famed sportscaster Brent Musburger, then a young columnist for the Chicago American newspaper, called Smith and Carlos “a pair of black-skinned stormtroopers,” a comparison to Nazis.
“One gets a little tired of having the United States run down by athletes who are enjoying themselves at the expense of their country,” he wrote, according to a “Nation” magazine piece. “Protesting and working constructively against racism in the United States is one thing, but airing one’s dirty clothing before the entire world during a fun and games tournament was no more than a juvenile gesture by a couple of athletes who should have known better.”
Long before pro football player Colin Kaepernick took his knee, Carlos and Smith saw their “show” canceled by an
outraged public seeking to conceal the truth of one of American’s greatest sins upon itself.
They were not the first Black people to fall victim to such undeserved treatment. Kaepernick was far from the last.
Stripped of the medals, Smith and
Carlos received death threats and a lifetime ban from the Olympics. They felt a mountain of pressure that Carlos told Smithsonian magazine was a factor in his then-wife’s suicide in 1977.
The protest “was a cry for freedom and for human rights. We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard,” Smith told that magazine.
How ironic it is that some people now rally around those who are being “canceled” for dastardly and inhumane statements and actions that should be called out.
How many of those many who are outraged now fumed over the cancellation of Carlos and Smith’s track and field careers, or when Kaepernick was effectively blacklisted by the NFL for his political actions?
Cancel culture is a real thing, but some who now shout “cancel culture” forget that too many people standing on sound principles and for important causes have been effectively canceled. That’s what should be canceled. Amelia Robinson is the Columbus Dispatch’s opinion and community engagement editor.
@1Ameliarobinson