Times of protest lead to tough conversations, action for USA’s top Black swimmers
When USA Swimming wanted to put out a statement condemning racism, it contacted Cullen Jones for input.
Jones, who won four Olympic medals in 2008 and 2012, is one of just a few high-profile Black swimmers in the United States. It seemingly made sense for the organization to consult him about what to do in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and Black Lives Matter protests around the country.
But Jones, 36, told USA Swimming that as a retired swimmer, he thought there were other voices who needed to be heard. He thought of younger swimmers like Lia Neal, a two-time Olympic medalist; Simone Manuel, who in 2016 became the first Black female swimmer to win an individual Olympic gold medal for the United States; and Reece Whitley, a 2021 Olympic hopeful.
“My first thing was like, you need to put out something quickly,” Jones told USA TODAY Sports. “You need to address this head on because I’m not talking about myself anymore because I have retired and I’m not training for 2021. Not only Olympians but Olympic hopefuls are coming up, and they are not only people that are going to contribute to Team USA, they are leaders on your team. They might be voted your captains. So you need, as an organization, to stand behind them.”
Though USA Swimming took Jones’ comments into account and released a statement June 1, he continued the conversation and passed the torch thereafter. Now, Whitley — a 20-year-old incoming junior at Cal — is leading the charge to discuss with USA Swimming what changes it should make institutionally to improve the culture for Black swimmers.
Swimming has always been a predominantly white sport in the U.S. About 1.5% of the 327,337 athletes who are members at the premium and outreach level identified themselves as Black or African American in a 2019 survey of USA Swimming members. An additional 6.5% of the 327,337 identified as being “mixed” according to USA Swimming, although it did not specify which ethnic or racial groups are represented. Thirty-four percent did not respond to a question asking ethnicity information.
USA Swimming has different levels of membership. Premium athlete members make up the bulk of membership, and outreach members are those who are “under-represented or economically disadvantaged youth.”
The organization recently released a statement that acknowledges the obstacles Black swimmers have faced historically.
“We would be naive to think that swimming is not a microcosm of our society,” it said in a second statement June 12. “Due to a number of historical events, including the segregation of pools and the limitations placed on Black swimmers, swimming, like society, fostered systemic racism. While swimming has come a long way, we acknowledge that our progress has been much too slow. There is still much work to be done, and it will take continued awareness, advocacy and hard work.”
Coming together as a group
The discussion among some of America’s top Black swimmers didn’t come out of nowhere. In fact, it began nearly two weeks earlier, when Jones brought several together for the first time.
On May 26, the night after Floyd’s death, Jones had a brief encounter with a police officer while walking his dog in his suburban South Carolina neighborhood. Although the encounter was amicable, Jones walked away thinking that with worse luck, he could’ve suffered the same fate as Floyd.
Jones knows that constant fear is a reality of life for many Black Americans and that he’d one day have to discuss police brutality with his 10-month-old son, who is Black and Indian. After years of keeping relatively quiet and treating his social media like a brand, Jones decided he needed to make his story heard. On May 31, he posted on Instagram a picture of Floyd with a message about his experiences.
That same Sunday, Neal posted a video on her YouTube channel titled “An Honest Conversation.” Neal, who is black and Asian, started YouTubing just recently, and most of her videos focused on hair and skincare. But Neal had been feeling off for a few days and knew she couldn’t just put out her normal content. In her nearly 14-minute video, Neal described the confluence of emotions that came with being Black during the coronavirus pandemic and some of the coping mechanisms she’d used to keep her mental health in check.
But both wanted to do something more, especially in their small community of Black elite swimmers. So on June 2, the day the entertainment industry created Blackout Tuesday in support of Black artists, Neal reached out to Jones.
“I feel like people are being really quiet on social media and posting a black box isn’t (sufficient),” Neal told him. “What can we do?”
