The start of the Winter Olympics on Feb. 6 is emerging to provide us with the gift of distraction.
We are starting to hear a familiar song play on our televisions and within the many apps on our phone. The blend of Leo Arnaud’s “The Bugler’s Dream” with John Williams’ “The Olympic Fanfare and Theme” will soon become the soundtrack of our lives. We will hum it when we are at work, and when we hear it blare from a passing screen, we will momentarily stop and wonder how the Americans are performing.
There will be a debate whether an executed double axel as opposed to an imperfect triple toe loop should keep a figure skater off the medal stand. Those medals will matter for two weeks, but in our 24-hour news cycle, the results will fade once the Games end. Acts of courage, however, never die in the Olympics.
With weeks to go before the Winter Olympics, the world is burning. International unrest coupled with diplomatic unsettledness is creating global unease. Domestically, ICE’s tactics are worrisome for many, especially considering recent murders in Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolis. As a result, citizens are desperately looking for heroes to provide us with moral clarity we can all understand.
The unique platform of Olympic athletes
As the United Nations calls for peace while the Games are held, the IOC prefers conformity and tradition, order and ceremony. History proves that watching people act courageously and exhibit the ability to overcome adversity makes the Olympics the ultimate reality television show. They also enable the spectacle to be the most iconic, cross-cultural event in today’s world.
To be clear, disruption and courage are not the same. A bent knee, a raised fist and a turned back on a flag are not disruptive, but all the symbols can be groundbreaking and needed. In watching the Olympics, people look to be part of moments bigger than what a scoreboard says are happening.
The IOC misunderstands its greatest asset and what makes the Olympics so important to the fabric of culture: It is a place where a society finds its heroes on and off the playing surfaces. The final medal count is only one barometer of power. The legacy of an Olympiad can also be made when an athlete or group of athletes makes the world question its moral conscience.
We witnessed this in 1968. In Mexico City, Bob Beamon’s long jumping and Dick Fosbury’s high jump flopping performances were decades ahead of their time. Yet only one picture is etched into the minds of many Americans: John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s fist-raising, black-glove-wearing Black Power Salute on the medal stand after their 200-meter race.
‘Moral mettle matters more’ than medals
Few remember Carlos and Smith’s places on the medal stand, but nearly all remember what they stood for: a protest against racial discrimination. With the world watching, they forced a country to confront its moral conscience while giving marginalized communities a moment to forever hold onto.
Likewise, women first participated in the 1900 Paris Olympics. This was especially significant for the seven Americans among the group of 22 women participants, as they represented a country that wouldn’t allow them to vote in federal elections until 1920. These athletes showed that women belong in all the places men do, even if the laws didn’t reflect it at that moment.
An Olympic gold medal fails to hold comparable value.
Silence is conformity, and conformity paves the road to apathy. The idea of “shut up and play” does not exist in a world in which national anthems are played and cities host Olympiads to project the image of political or economic power.
When athletes wear a country’s name across their uniform, they represent the hopes and dreams of an entire nation, not just the communities from which they come. The world is burning and we are looking for fire on ice, but in a setting where medals are supposed to matter most, Olympic history reminds us that moral mettle matters more.
Blair Thomas is a political science professor at Western Kentucky University.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: As Olympics near, athletes are silent on ICE shootings, etc. | Opinion
