Not three years ago, Brittney Griner refused to take the floor when the WNBA played the national anthem before tipoff. “I think we should take that much of a stand,” she said at the time, arguing that “basketball doesn’t mean anything in a world where we can’t just live. We can’t wake up and do whatever we want to do.” Such is the plight, she said, of being black in America.
Yet it was in part Griner’s race, as well as her sexual orientation—she is a lesbian—that made her detention by Russia in February a high-profile news story and turned her case into a cause célèbre for activists and journalists, but we repeat ourselves.
