The Cost of Excellence

that is wrong. Whether it is the action that is being taken at the states against abortion now the latest being Utah, whether it is you know, the recognition that kids in K through twelve schools are having a really difficult time getting back into what it means to be in school in a pandemic, and we're hearing reports about anxiety, depression, dress, all of the things that we have been experiencing over the last two years, our kids, the nation's kids have

been experiencing, and are we dealing with this. There is just so much that I wanted to take a break, just one day, to take a break and have a really thoughtful conversation with the host of a podcast series,

a storytelling series called American Prodigies. And I speak today with host Amia Rose Davis, who is an assistant professor of History and African American Studies at U Penn and She's also co host of a popular podcast that you all may know because they've had over a million downloads, which is called Burn It All Down, and it is a feminist sports podcast, but in American prodigies. This series

really delves into this iteration. It is in now its third season and what a mirror does if this season, the third season is delve into black women in gymnastics, and she goes through the eighties, the nineties, the early aughts, and into now and what it has meant to be

a black gymnast right at all levels of competition. And when we think about this, I, you know, we will have a conversation where I will talk about the Naser case, right Larry Naser, you know, the horrific, disgusting sexual predator that acted as the doctor for elite gymnasts twenty thirty years and sexually assaulted, raped, many of these well known gymnasts that we have watched tumble and get gold medals, and we have cheered on, not knowing silently the pain

that they were all dealing with until recently when the case became national spotlight. The conversation that I have with Amra is, you know, one of the things that has always shook me is the pedestal that we put athletes on and our thought around the sacrifices that they make and what it takes to be and a prodigy one

of the greats. But what we have learned over some very high profile folks like a Simone Biles and deciding that she was not going to compete in some of the events at the past Olympics because of what her mental health. We've heard Naomi Osaka say the same thing

about her mental health and well being. And I think that we for generations have loved to believe that these athletes were, you know, superhuman because they can perform things that we can only dream and imagine, but we never really think about or have conversations about what they are suffering through and what they are struggling through in order

to grab that metal. Many of these young prodigies that Amira speaks to, who you know have now since have grown right or coaching themselves, will share some of their experiences about what it means, what it meant to be the only black girl in an entire gym, how they were judged differently based on their body structure, points deducted because they have a little bit more, but than their white you know colleagues, how their hair or was treated,

how their bodies were treated, how they were talked about. So not only are they having to work through some of the most unbearable pains and strains, right that they put their bodies to in order to be the best, but the emotional scarring and the trauma. In this episode, we will talk about food disorders, we will talk about sexual assault and trauma, and you know, really delve into this part of athleticism that we don't necessarily spend a

whole lot of time talking about. When we looked at the makeup of the latest you know, women's US women's Olympic team, we were marveling and applauding at the diversity that was present. These young black girls, right who I can remember growing up and knowing but just a few names, right of these gymnasts that look like me, and now you have an entire team, But you take into consideration what they have fought against in order to get to

this place. And so in this eight part series that Amira takes us through, she takes us through the stories of what it's like to be inside these gyms, to be inside these elite setups to come from, you know, potentially low income families that are literally giving their children away because here you have opportunity, you have possibility. I often think about, you know, during the Olympics is when the world's eyes are on sports and on the same

sports at the same time. And the stories, the little vigneyettes that they do in the Olympics where you get to know the people that are competing and you get to know their families, and they are you know, wonderfully packaged, you know, segments and vignettes that we all you know that inspire right or bring us to tears because we understand that those people that are performing on the mat, on the beam on bars are doing so having faced a lot of trauma tragedy in their own lives, and

it gives us this inspiration that we need to persevere through our dark times. But there's a lot that is left out about the treatment of young girls. I think back to carry strug I think back to her performance in nineteen ninety six on the vault, doing so knowing that she was badly injured, but everything was relying on her, the country, the team, and we all applauded as she broke down in tears after she stuck that landing, basically breaking her body so that America could have a medal.

And of course you can say, oh, Danielle, but she worked her entire life for this, Yes, but I want us to pause and think about what it means to applaud at other people's pain and suffering. And then we would find out later about the sexual abuse that these girls were carrying with them and had carried with them for years their entire lives because they didn't know any better. So in this series, you know, I think that Amira gives folks a behind the scenes pulling back the curtain

in a way beyond the inspirational vignatson. Yes, there is inspiration, and she says, you know at the end of this interview that there is also a lot of joy, but there is also a lot of pain as well, And I think that it is okay to talk about those things because we are layered complex human beings and it's amazing.

It's a marvel at what the human body is capable of doing when it is optimized, when it's met the optimization along with just the inherent talent, and what can happen when those things combine, but also thinking about the cost of that, right, because there is a cost. And while we can say, you know, nowadays, people you know can capitalize and commodify in a way that they can make financial gains, you know, if you reach the pinnacle,

But what about those that don't. Because for every Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas and Dominique DAWs, there are thousands of names that we will never know, but who have put their bodies emotionally, spiritually, and physically through the ranger in the hopes of getting on top of that Olympic stand. And so, you know, it was really great to be in conversation to kind of take a break, folks from the news of the day and just hear a different story.

In the coming weeks on the show as well, I'm going to start doing interviews with fiction authors right as a way to kind of once again sprinkle in something that is a bit different, something that is divergent from our steady diet of our democracy crumbling, things that allow us to just give our brains and our hearts some rest so that we are able to continue fighting and continue marching forward to where I'm not quite sure these

days I'm going to be honest with you. But what I do know is that I want Woke AF to continue being the voice of reason, continue to be a space for us to connect with the truth right because I think that that's getting harder and harder to decipher from the nonsense, from the deep concern that I know

that all of you have because I share it. But every once in a while, it is really important for us to just take some respite, learn something different, stretch our brains in a different way, or just sit back and listen to a good story, read a good book, listen to a good podcast that isn't about the news of the day. So I hope that you all enjoy my conversation with Amra, host of American Prodigies, which is

out now wherever you get your podcasts. So if after this interview you want to check out American Prodigies or the other show that she has che co host, Burn It All Down, you should, right, because there should be some balance into what we are consuming on a day to day basis. So I hope that you enjoy this interview. Coming up next, folks, I am very excited to welcome to okate app daily for the very first time A mirror.

Rose Davis, who is Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at U Penn, is also the host of the American Prodigies a Story, an eight week series look at black girls in gymnastics, which is in its third season. You're also a mirror the co host of the popular podcast Burn It All Down, a feminist sports podcast. Let's start with you are a person after my own heart, which sounds like you have three and four jobs. I would ask if you were like me, if you are

of Jamaican lineage, because that is our go to. Never it is never enough to just do one thing, you must do eight. So let's talk first about American Prodigies and how this came, how this podcast came to be. For sure, I'm not Jamaican, but we do have Caribbean lineage. I feel like black women are always kind of primed to have multiple hustles. So yeah, Prodigies has been a very special project that I've done over the last year. American Prodigies is a series on Blue Wire podcast Network.

The first season was hosted by Grant Wall about freddie Ado. The second season was about hen Griffey Jr. And then I had the great pleasure of hosting the third season. And at first I was thinking about Gabby Douglas. I was thinking about these black girl prodigies in sports. Obviously I study the intersection of race, gender, sports and politics.

But as we started getting into it and I started interviewing black women and black girls in gymnastics, I was like, this sport is set up in a way that if you're excelling at all in this sport, you're a prodigy because you have to start so young. And we kind of blew up the template for the seasons of American Prodigies singular and made it American Prodigies plural to look at black girless in gymnastics from the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, the early adds up until today. And that's

what we've done over the last year. Shout out to my story editor Jessica Luther and my producers Jessica Bodiford and Kelly Hardcastle Jones. The four of us have really been in the mud trying to tell these stories that oftentimes are muted in our analysis of gymnastics or kind of left off of discussions about black girls in sports because it's like, oh, that's a white sport. There aren't black girls there. And what we've uncovered is that they've

always been there, they continue to be there. And even though right now it feels like black girls are having a moment in gymnastics, it's been a long time coming. You know, there has often you know, obviously through the horrible scandal right UH in the sport of gymnastics that really put I think a spotlight onto the treatment of

these girls, who is silenced, who is not? UM brought into also the consideration of economic status right UM and how these young girls that ages four, five six years old are sent away right to UM to really hone their talents and their skills. But then what we've learned through the Naser cases then are open to such um sexual violence and vulnerabilities, and so UM in in in thinking about just how and why gymnastics has been in UM in the spotlight for for a while in terms

of the news. What are some of the things that you uncovered um in in the series that has to do UM with kind of the the the violence that we have learned about, the vulnerabilities and particularly how black girls have been situated in particular in the midst of all of this. That's a great question. I will issue a trigger warning for listeners. I'm about to discuss sexual abuse,

disordered eating, emotional abuse as well. I think that's one of the main questions I had going into this is that we had been able culturally to unpack gymnastics as a site of harm through the NASCAR case, through even in the nineties, little girls in pretty boxes, or these

ideas that gymnastics is something that grinds you up. And I was really stuck with thinking about that inevitable one black girl in a gym who was dealing with all of those things, and then also layering on racism on top of that, And I said, I don't know if we've ever asked what gymnastics looks like through the eyes of black girls. And so that was really my starting point.

And a lot of what we uncovered has all of these moments where it crashes in to stories that we know about gymnastics, but there's just like an added layer that they articulate. And so Betty o'kino, who was a story gym gymnast, a trailblazer in the early nineties, went to the Barcelona Olympics in ninety two. She was also one of the first students of the Coroles, which you know,

they like ran all of American gymnastics. And when I was talking to her, for instance, like she was talking about disordered eating, she was telling me where she hid her food. She was talking about how she was broken down, right, how she would be training something that she knew she couldn't do, or that she knew she was too tired to do, and she would be told to do it to the point of injury. Right, the amount of injuries

people were recapping. And I asked her, you know, she talked about how she felt like she had no voice, she couldn't speak up. And I said, like, what would the consequence be? And she was like, well, it wasn't just that I was tall, or that I was brown or anything like that. And it's not just that you'd be a sassy gymnast, but you'd be a sassy black gymnast. You would be, you know, endorsing all the stereotypes that they held about you before you walked in the door.

And the thing about Betty is like Betty was half Romanian and so she was in the gym with the Coroles while they were talking mess about all of the gymnasts in the gym, calling them names, talking about their bodies in Romanian. But she could understand, and they just didn't think she could because she's black, and they didn't expect the black girl just understand Romanian. But she heard firsthand right that same level of kind of scrutiny. And so we have a point in our conversation that's Betty's

episode three. Our conversation really talks about the story of injury and abuse in that way, and she talks about how she when the NASCAR case broke her, even when they started scrutinizing what happened at the Coroles ranch where

everybody had to go train for the national team. She there's clips of her on Oprah like defending them, and so I had the pleasure of kind of talking to her and really unpacking her family, her childhood, and I asked her, it feels like the way that the ranch was run, it was very similar to how your household was run. So I can see as a teenager being asked to dismiss all of that was really putting you in a position where you had to reflect on childhood trauma.

And you know, and she talked about her long journey to be able to name abuse as abuse, and I think that's what we see a lot of times in the podcast to other stories that come up mirror that. Simone Biles's story, for instance, is all about her as a survivor. I talked to her mom, Nellie Biles, for that episode, and she's talking about those childs and tribulations

and what it means to speak out. Or Tasha Swiker, black woman who was a victim of Nasser and then got her JD and was actually a part of the

legal team that delivered a settlement to all survivors. So black girls are in and of this history, and they articulate with pinpoint accuracy how race intersects and and kind of expands these traumas that they were unpacking in the sport, alongside disordered eating and body scrutiny and you know, exploitation, etc. You know, when you bring up UM, the eating disorders, UM in particular, I kind of want to delve into UM because we know that black women in sports, regardless

of the sport that you're in, but particularly in gymnastics, right your frame um is looked at right in it in a certain way. We see this as a culture through the experiences, and how Serena Williams and Venus Williams have talked about, um, you know, being able to move through that outward scrutiny, the just bold racism um and so our bodies being too muscular to this to that, too big to blah blah blah. How did that? Um? How? How how was it that they saw themselves their bodies

in relation to their peers? Yea, And how did I if you're in a space where everything is seemed to be normal, right, the hiding of food, the restriction of food, the over exertion in terms of of of physical prowess, Like if all of these things are considered normal when you're in this kind of um compound, right, the ranch and these training facilities, how do you know what abuse is exactly right? Yeah? And I think like this is one of the things that was really great about layering

experiences because you could see that some families approaches. Right. There's an episode episode six follows na Denis and Sophinadjes is two of the earliest viral sensations, those videos you always see on your timeline. But we also talked to both of their mothers, and their mothers had very different tactics for attempting to keep their children safe in this sport, and so Fina de Jesus's mother, Maria always yanked her

out of the sport. Right. She was constantly like, that was her style of doing it is affirming like you that you knew how to lay your baby hairs when you went to the ranch in Houston, right, that you knew how to retain yourself in these spaces. And other people were like, no, we need to play by the rules. We need to do this because that's how you're going to stay safe. And what we see is that neither

really matter. When we talk to the gymnast, they talk about their hair right all through through every gymnast in every decade I talked to, right are talking about the

politics of their hair being policed in these spaces. The first episode of the season is a conversation I had with Jordan Chiles, and I talked to her like two weeks when she came back from Tokyo from the Olympics, and she told me a story she had never told anybody before about her early cutting her hair right and thinking about all of these ways that they received that message that your hair is out of bounds here. Right.

We talk to people who are trying to reform gymnastics judging because gymnastics, like figures getting it's an aesthetic sport, which is why figure and frame come into so much focus on top of like usual, because it's actually how they're judged as well. And so we talked to a former gymnast, Jasmine Swinnagan, who's one of three black judges in the entire state of Minnesota and is doing work

to root out bias and judging. And one of the things she was telling us is, like, it's so common to see your points be deducted because the template they're using to judge, say, split legs can't don't you know, doesn't account for all that, but right, like doesn't account for fuller figures. Judges who are used to like what appointed foot needs to look like are taught about like

looking where the color of the foot is. And she had to literally bring in a diagram of a black foot to say, don't deduct points because you're seeing two colors, because our feet just look like that, right, And so thinking about not only the athletes and the sport of gymnastics, but all of these other things that factor in and are constantly giving you messages that your body's wrong, your hair is wrong, your feet are like all of this stuff,

and it lives on them. They recount it, they talk about it, and they talk about also how we're combating it. So one of my favorite episodes, the last episode episode, it is really about an organization called Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, who has been working to provide spaces that are holistic

for these black girls. They had we went to a meet and grambling where the coaches were black, and the athletic trainers were black, and the judges were black, and they had wacondo leotards, and they had meetings with parents

about how to navigate predominantly white gym spaces. They've been working with HBCUs to develop gymnastics in those programs because, as you mentioned earlier, the long history of American gymnastics has required you to be in certain spaces that are very exclusive, and those spaces are predominantly white, and there's a practice of not just enrolling in it and paying in it, but literally needing to give your child two coaches who supposedly have their best interest in mind to

this best gym in Iowa, right, like all of these places. And I think that you can see the long lasting trauma of that really being articulated through some of the stories we tell. You know, I think about, now, what are some of the differences where you can see and I say differences in the way of progress? Right, So you have gone through the decades, like you're saying, you know, going from the eighties to the earl you know, to the early as to now, what are what are the

indicators that you've seen of progress? Yeah, other other than us having a team the Olympic team which looked I mean ten year old me who entered a gymnastics gym for the first time because I used to watch Nadia story on repeat as a as a child and so wanted to get into get into gymnastics at that age.

What are the markers of progress? For sure? I mean start with what you just said, the fact that there's more visibility, right, And but what we try to really push on is just because there's visibility at the elite level does not mean everything's good at levels two, three, four or five six. I think the work that Brown Girls is doing is really UM important. Actually, as we were finishing up that episode, Fisk announced the first ever

women's gymnastics program at at hbcu UM. The coach Connie Traversey that they high was the first black gymnast to everyone the NCAA All Around title back in the late eighties early nineties. She's now the head coach at FIST. So we talk about that. That's really kind of poetic

for me to see happening. I talked to all these viral sensations, you know, Hallie and Sophia and Nia, and the way that they build a space for themselves within an institution, away from the elite space, but still called out stuff they were seeing at the collegiate level and also figured out what it looked like for them right to take ownership of how they love to interact with

the sport. So Hallie's a choreographer, and Nia is like at the met Gala doing gymnastics, and Sophia's in Gatorade commercials, and they are really staking their own claim to what gymnastics means through their eyes. Somebody like Jordan childs Is, you know, has her own clothing line, has her sister really intentionally styling her hair, is, you know, not accepting these messages is like your hair has to be one way, or your body has to be one way, your leotards

have to be one way. Simone Biles is a blueprint for so much of this because she was so undeniable, She had a lot of cultural capital, and she has spoken out for survivors. She had the Goat Tour, which was a gymnastics tour unlike anything we've ever seen that wasn't just like the sparkle and frills of the sport. There's a whole segment in that show where she's literally being chased around by dancers wearing sweatshirts saying your anxiety

is lying to you. Has a whole discussion of mental health in the show, and is really like bringing the sport into new ground and talking about mental health, talking about wellness in a holistic view, and so all of those things for me feel like a new frontier and I really kind of mark how recent it has been. When talking to recent graduates of UCLA, they said, I

feel like the freshman when I was a senior. They're entering a new day, but it's just like a three year turn in the last like five years, right and so a lot of the work that we did was like giving us this foundation to stand on so as we go forward, we're not just like, Okay, here's a picture of Simone's gym the WCC with like all these black girls who are going to be commedied competing at upcoming trials or worlds or whatever, and think that that's enough,

but really understanding how they went about building that, why it had to be build, and how it can be replicated so that whether you're a Level one or a Level ten, or in college or elite, you have a safe space in order to practice the sport you love. You know, one of the things that I and because you were just speaking about Simone Biles, that I have appreciated so much is her openness with regard to talking about her mental health. And you know, we saw that

back you know, years prior. This was after other legal conflicts with Michael Phelps having a conversation about depression and now being you know, a person that that endorses um different like online therapies. You know, there's a part of us in society that you know, we hold these athletes that are that are at the elite, that are at the top of their game as like the model for how we all would want to be. Right, Um, look

at their sacrifice, look at their dedication. But there's a part of sacrifice that isn't just about missing you know, the prom and the sleepovers and you know, and and the entertainment side of youth. But there's a sacrifice of their health, of their mental health and wellness and what

it takes to be at this elite level. What do you think about you know, Simone and others being these black you know, like athletes with this kind of cultural capital to have conversations that are not I don't want to say that they're they're still taboo, because I don't believe that they are still taboo in the black community, but there are not as many notable people that have conversations publicly about mental about mental health in the black community.

So how do you think that that has her openness has had an impact not just on the sport as a whole, which had was, you know, really grounded in a lot of silence, but has had with the black community. Yeah, I would say Simone Naomi Osaka Raven Saunders, black women have really been at the forefront of talking about mental health in sports and without it. I think that there's a real impact that it's having not only in their

respective sports, but really across like generations. I have a lot of athletes I work with doing oral histories with from who competed in the sixties and the seventies, and over the summer they were calling and wanting to talk about mental health and saying that this generation has given them a language in order to talk about that. I also just think, as you gesture too, it sparks a conversation.

So oftentimes we talk about sports as a reflection, as a mirror, and I oftentimes say what we really need to understand it as a laboratory because it can both reflect society, but it can also be the place where ideas or practices come to fruition and then get pushed

out to society. And I think that mental health conversations is one of those spaces where it's meaningful with somebody with their culture, capital, their platform, their visibility to say no, to draw boundaries, right to take control of their own narratives. Both Simone and Naomio Soccer, for instance, produce documentaries about their own kind of journeys and didn't let the media's narrative of their mental health or their struggles or whatever

eclipse what their own truth was. And I think that's really a game djur in terms of disrupting the sports media complex, you know as it is, and all of these things are having effects. I see student athletes, you know, at the high school level, college athletes that I work with more willing to have these conversations for wherever they're at because they're seeing people like Simone have those conversations.

It's incredibly important. And I tell you the best time talking to her mother, who talked about sports psychology and talked about how you know, how important for her it was to instill these ideas in her kids that you can talk to somebody, right, we can talk about these issues that if we keep it bottled up like that's

really harmful. And I know we're talking about this like this heavy, but I have to say, like, there is joy throughout this podcast, and in particular when I think of joy Nellie Biles is just a ray of light. And she tells a story that has had me laughing for weeks, right about Simone in the bars and stuff like that, and I think that that's part of it for me too, like, I as somebody who does this a lot. Usually when a black woman in sports does something,

it means that my schedule gets busier. And I found myself this summer taking instruction from the athletes I work with to say I need my own boundaries, like I need to worry about my mental health because I am tired right And it's like, I'm not going to sacrifice my body, my mental health and wellness anything like that for our institution or for this or for the grind

or whatever. And we joked at the top of the show about having a million different jobs, but knowing when to be able to say no to the hustle and able to say yes to rest has been something that has been almost easier to invoke when you see people like Naomial soccer Simone Biles doing it. And I think that even when we went into making this podcast, my producer Jessica Bodiford saying like we have to find the joy and not to discount the harm, but rather because

it coincides and sometimes moving between. It is how people have coped and it's also how we wanted to produce it. So after every end credits is a moment of joy. There's laughter, throughout it. Me and Betty Okino, who are birthday twins, have like extreme Gemini energy during our episode and we're like laughing and we're talking about really hard things, but we're really jovial while doing it, and that's just

our affect. And I think that that having the ability to talk about mental health and to talk about these journeys but also holds space with all of these kind of layered, complicated things together is what I'm seeing and what I'm really appreciative of folks like Simone, you know,

facilitating you know, more space for that to occur. I mean, it's it's such an important conversation to have, particularly you know, even on my show, which I do a terrible job of doing, which is the you know, the go between between continued conversations on political rage and then the need for there to the rest right that you can't be

in a state of rage all the time. UM And so I think that, you know, in every way, we try and show some type of balance, like we're all full complete humans that have very complicated, layered, you know, beautifully tragic stories. Um to to to share, Uh, please tell folks a mirror where they can check out this incredible layered eight stories. UM podcasts for sure anywhere you get your podcasts, which is like the go to easy

answer now UM it lives all throughout there. Also, if you go to the website on bluewire dot com, find American Prodigies. We also have transcripts for all our episodes there should you want trainscripts or um need to read along while you listen. Um. I also created a podcast playlist for Spotify that includes episodes of this podcast, but also um of other podcas has showcasing black women in sports,

and that's called hear Us Now. You can search out on the Spotify platform, but it's really everywhere that you get your podcast. If you follow me on Twitter at Mira Rose eighty eight or on Instagram Mira Rose six I'm so basic right now. Both places have real snippets of interviews, links to the show, the show notes, etc. I highly recommend it. All episodes are out now and so you get eight episodes plus a bonus episode talking about what we wish we could have put in the

narrative pod. And if you subscribe to like Apple's subscription whatever, there's bonus episodes which are my extended interviews with gymnasts for each episode and it is I mean, I the best time talking to these women. I just have to tell everybody you have to get Angie Dankins in your life. Angie Dankins was being champion in nineteen eighty six. She

has no filter whatsoever. She is a gem and I just want everybody in the world if they don't, if you do one thing, please go find this podcast episode two and get you some Angie Dakins in your life because she is worth everything. I love it so much. I'm Nera Rose Davis. Thank you so much for making the time to join woke f We appreciate you, thanks for having me. That is it for me. Dear friends here on woke f as always power to the people

and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.