What the tears of Florida’s Olympic champion, on hearing the National Anthem, say to us | Opinion
I didn’t know Erin Jackson, but I recognized the tears of the Olympic champion from Ocala upon hearing the National Anthem during her gold medal ceremony in Beijing on Sunday.
Stirring, they flowed freely down her Black and beautiful countenance.
I cried with her.
I know the deep place where the feelings come from — resilience and overcoming obstacles and, yes, patriotism, too, despite the turbulence of the times.
Or, perhaps, because of them.
Jackson’s gold medal in the 500-meter speed skate is not only a quixotic personal victory, but a historic marker. At 29, she becomes the first African American woman to win an Olympic medal in speed skating.
It also was the first medal for a U.S. speed skater in Beijing. And the first individual speed-skating medal won by an American since the 2010 Vancouver Games.
And a gold one it is!
It’s not the first glass-ceiling-crushing moment for this Sunshine State athlete who competes in Winter Games. In 2018, Jackson became the first African American woman in the United States to qualify for the long-track speed-skating team going to the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
A deeper meaning in Jackson’s gold
This time, however, considering the racially charged atmosphere in Florida, a state hellbent on sanitizing the teaching of African American history in schools, her win takes on deeper meaning, beyond athletic achievement.
And beyond her impressive academic record as well. Jackson graduated with honors from the materials science and engineering program at the University of Florida. Like her skating speed, focus and control, her scholarly accomplishments are remarkable.
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Who she is and her place in history become even more relevant considering the ultra-conservative place where Jackson hails from, Ocala, where Trumpian politics and now Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ultra-right initiatives dominate the public sphere.
In fact, the senator who represents Ocala in the Florida Legislature, Dennis Baxley, is the Senate sponsor of the highly controversial bill that seeks to curtail the free-speech rights of gay students at a time when another like-minded bill seeks to protect white students in schools and grownups in the workplace from the “discomfort, guilt, anguish” that racial discussions might cause them.
The politics and Baxley’s role came to mind when I learned that the history-making Olympic gold winner was from Ocala.
Oh, the irony that a Black woman would bring glory to a town whose senator in Tallahassee is part of the DeSantis gang trying to quash any semblance of teaching of Black history that stirs the horror and the shame it should.
This is who the politicians don’t “see,” the people they think don’t matter when they’re busy concocting hateful, divisive bills.
But I digress. This isn’t about the politicians dominating Florida politics these backward days.
Ocala ‘speed juice’
It’s about a little girl in a Florida town — the daughter of a retired fire truck driver and a pharmacist technician who turned her on to skating but died in 2011 — who lifts us all with her talent and skill.
And it is about the dignity of those tears.
And about how she filled us with national pride when she skated on the ice hoisting an American flag after winning the gold medal.
And it is about the one thing team sports so often does: brings out the best in people.
Teammate Brittany Bowe, 33, didn’t want to go to her third and likely final Olympics without Jackson, who had slipped during the qualifying in Milwaukee and came in fourth.
Jackson’s slip was a stunning and horribly disappointing development because she was the world’s top-ranked skater at the trials.
Bowe, in a generous act of friendship and camaraderie, bowed out so that Jackson could take her place. I will mention that Bowe, who was still able to compete when the United States was allotted extra spaces, is white. And I do so because it’s relevant to the poignancy of this moment of Olympic glory and what it should teach us.
We are all on this Earth together, and we win if we work for the benefit of one another, not against each other. These two American women are role models for what this nation could be, if indeed, it were a nation “for all.”
In the darkness of the times, they hold not only Olympic gold — but the light.
Noting the speed skating talent from Florida — two other top skaters in the American team, including Bowe and Joey Mantia, are from Ocala — an NBC interviewer asked Jackson: “What’s in the water in Ocala?”
“Speed juice, I guess,” said Jackson, who started as an in-line skater, crediting her longtime Team Florida coach Renee Hildebrand, also from Ocala, for her success.
Hildebrand and Jackson’s mother, Rita, met at a diner in town and the coach asked her to bring her daughter, who loved roller skating, to an event.
The rest, as they say, is Florida, and now, Olympic history.
So let’s celebrate Erin Jackson’s triumph.
Embrace the history embedded in her tears upon hearing our anthem, and think about her as the specter of racism looms all too real, too mainstream in the 2022 Florida lawmaking games.
She is us.
This story was originally published February 16, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
