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Student Athlete Takes a StandToni Smith Speaks OutOne year ago last December, when Toni Smith was a senior at Manhattanville College and captain of the women's basketball team, she sparked public debate by protesting on the court at the start of the U.S. preparations for war in Iraq. As the national anthem played, she turned her back on the U.S. flag. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Toni Smith by Dave Zirin, news editor of the Prince George's Post in Maryland, looking back on the controversy. The full text can be read at www.edgeofsports.com.
Q: Why do you think your actions touched such a nerve?The debate around the [Iraq] war, no question. We were playing a game at St. Joseph's. Their assistant coach had just been sent over to serve. They were angry. Nothing really came about it at that game, but the next team we were scheduled to play was the Merchant Marine Academy. They had cadets lined up on the sidelines, each with their own flag that was about 7 feet tall. Every single person in the stand was in uniform, with their own flag. They were shouting things at me--obscenities, curses, you name it. It was unbelievable. Q: When did you first see the need to make a stand, and why did you feel it was so important to take the actions that you did?I'm from a mixed racial and ethnic background. My mom is Jewish, and my dad is black, white and Cherokee. I was learning about the prison-industrial complex and the wars against Native Americans. It made me very angry but I never paid attention to how this history played out on the [basketball] court. On the court I would just stand [for the national anthem] and let the time go by. Q: Every news story said that you were protesting the war on Iraq in particular. Was that in fact the case?The war took me from angry at the general direction of the U.S. to "Are you kidding!?!" But it wasn't just the war. It was everything that the flag is built on, everything that is continuing to happen. Q: We just passed the 35th anniversary of Tommie Smith and John Carlos's Black Power protest on the Olympic medal stand. When you were doing this, were you conscious that you were part of a tradition in sports and politics?I was aware of Muhammad Ali, and I was aware of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. I didn't feel in any way like I was on the same scale. I will say that like [Smith and Carlos], the point was not to put myself forward but to get people to talk about these issues. Last year people didn't want to acknowledge that we were going to war. It can become really easy to not acknowledge the fact that we are killing people in other countries because it's not here. Sept. 11 was terrible, but that level of destruction is [experienced] every single day by other people in other countries. I think that it is unbelievably arrogant to say [in the aftermath of Sept. 11], "Now we can do whatever we want." |
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