The sartorial customs of ICE made me realize that, except during cold weather, I rarely see a cyclist’s face covered. The SS wannabes are trying to avoid recognition; while most cyclists I’ve met aren’t actively seeking it, few are hiding.
There are exceptions, though:
Rear cyclist: Are you working on your aerodynamics?
Front cyclist: No, I just don’t want to be recognized in the photo,
This month—February—is Black History Month. And, at this moment, the Winter Olympics are taking place in Italy.
It’s difficult not to notice that more Black athletes have been competing—and winning— during the past few Winter Olympiads. While Erin Jackson didn’t make it to the podium this year, she won the gold medal in speed skating’s 500 meter event. Elena Meyers Taylor won a gold medal in bobsledding this year, at age 41, after taking home two bronze and three silver medals over the the previous three Olympiads. The US hockey team won this year’s gold medal with its first Black player, Laila Edwards, scoring a goal against rival Canada in the opening match.
But, to me, one of the most successful Olympic athletes of any race, nation or time is Lauryn Williams. She earned a silver medal in the 2014 Sochi Games’ two-woman bobsled event— after winning a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Summer Games and gold in the 2012 London Summer Games as a track athlete. Quick, name another athlete who won medals (gold, no less) in both the Winter and Summer Games.
Speaking of Summer Games, one of the most memorable victories was by a silver medalist: Nelson Vails in the 1984 Los Angeles games. Fellow American Mark Gorski won the gold in that year’s sprint. What made Vails’ finish so memorable was that he and Gorski rode such a good race—and that Vails was the first African-American to win an Olympic medal in cycling.
One reason why Vails’ medal, and his other victories, were so important is that they came in a sport, and in venues—like those of the Winter Olympics—in which most competitors and spectators were White. After Major Taylor—one of the greatest cyclists, athletes and human beings who ever lived—cycling went into a long, steady decline in North America. Its main events and competitors for the next seven decades were in Europe and Japan. When the ‘70’s North American Bike Boom helped to revive bike racing in the US, most of the new competitors were White suburban college students for a variety of social and economic reasons. I think Nelson Vails helped to show young Black would-be athletes and White audiences that Blacks could, and would excel in sports other than those stereotypically associated with them, like basketball, (American) football, track and field (especially the sprint events) and boxing.*
*—Don’t get me wrong: I think they’re great sports. I am simply happy, or at least hopeful, that they won’t have to be the only ones accessible to Blacks or, for that matter, Whites or anyone else from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Today is Mardi Gras. The traditional colors are purple, green and gold. Why? Gold represents power, green stands for faith and purple, justice.
Now you know why I have four purple bicycles and have long been drawn to the color. All right, I didn’t know about the symbolism when I was a kid. Or maybe I did, subconsciously…
And perhaps that knowledge, conscious or not, guided my naming myself Justine. My mother told me, long before I began my gender affirmation process, that she would’ve given me that name had I been assigned the female sex at birth.
Knowing that made my gender affirmation (what was previously called the “gender transition “ or “sex change”) seem even more like justice after the decades I lived as male. Thus, my name and favorite color, which I love for their beauty, seem completely just on Mardi Gras, and every day.
