By: Carmen Phillips

In reply to Vita.

Respectfully Vita, a link round up title is often hard to encapsulate nuance like the kind you’re reaching for here. I’m also not sure that nuance escapes the point — two athletes, both on the brink of the Olympic careers, one of whom was Black, faced extremely different outcomes to their situations from two different committees related to Olympic competition. I’ll change the title from a singular “Olympic Committee” for clarity, but the overall point still stands.

Autostraddle link round up titles are often “voicey” or tongue-in-cheek, but the both the tweet and the article I selected center Sha’Carri’s commentary and not the Olympics overall, which is not something I claim to be an expert in. But we are far from the only website pointing out the overall double standard of treatment right now, it’s a prominent and ongoing conversation online — which is something I always hope these round ups reflect.

I do think there’s merit in this moment to asking in this situations if going back and forth in the comment section of a link round up selected by a Black woman, about the commentary of a separate Black woman about the systematic racism she’s faced, is particularly useful or helpful at this time? Sha’Carri Richardson made an observation about her own life, it is not any of our place to tell her that her own experiences are wrong. It certainly won’t be my place as an editor on this site.