Yahoo Shames Puritanical Bigots For Failing Griner, Black Women

We are all guilty. Shame on us. Brittney Griner is a black lesbian basketball player currently serving nine years in Russia’s prison for drug smuggling.  

Our accuser is Yahoo writer Sughnen Yongo-Okochi, an immigrant from Nigeria, who says the narrative on Griner needs to change. She assailed the people who say Griner should not have broken the rules in Russia, for they are “overly righteous and puritan when a black person gets into the slightest trouble.” 

Griner apologized to a Russian judge, but the people criticizing her on social media are making critical statements that “are shrouded in hidden internalized bigotry.” (Can a statement be “shrouded in hidden internalized bigotry?” Shrouds can be described as coverings. Things that have been hidden or internalized look like poor shrouds. Perhaps we should point out that Yongo Okochi has failed in the same way as Griner. 

Memes directed at Griner, the 6-foot-9-inch center of the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, are not funny either, Yongo-Okochi fumes. The people behind these light-hearted memes have supposedly created a “comedic fiasco sandwiched in politics” — just to gain a few hundred likes. The Yahoo writer adds that doing so “misses the mark and pushes us further away from our humanity.  

Griner, who has been held for several months now, has allegedly suffered poor treatment by Americans as well as Russian detainees. Real support, not wisecracks is the best thing to do now. 

Yet the empathy for Griner has been underwhelming, writes her defender. It’s deeply insensitive for people to counter that LeBron James would not have put himself in the situation (she tried to carry vape cartridges containing cannabis onto a plane in Moscow and got busted.)  

Yongo Okochi says this argument “blatantly dismisses the fact that Griner made a mistake, has owned up to it and is fighting hard for her freedom. Even though the internet has been awash with think pieces, the overall response to Griner’s imprisonment, which many have collectively called ‘unfair’ and ‘extreme,’ has been grossly underwhelming.” 

Griner’s story demonstrates that we need to do a better job of protecting black women. Who knew that she needed us to protect her by yelling “no!” before she tried to board that Russian jetliner? 

It’s not just the American people that let Griner down. The truth, Yongo-Okochi reveals, is that systems also fail black women. They aren’t always a priority of society, and this makes it even more painful to follow the Griner story. Black women are often “the most ignored, disrespected and ignored in society, and Griner’s story has repeatedly highlighted this theme,” the writer concludes. 

Yeah, Griner is so under-valued by American society that our government, it’s been reported, is willing to swap Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence in the United States. That’s right: an arms trafficker for a basketball player. This possibility shoots huge holes in Yongo-Okochi’s sensationalized indictment of U.S. citizens who bear no blame for Griner’s predicament.