When Shaun White clinched the gold in his halfpipe run, both the US and the global snowboarding world celebrated. When Lindsey Vonn broke down in tears after her medal-winning run, many of us (me included, I admit) joined her with our own shows of emotion. Naperville’s own Lysacek surprised us by beating out Plushenko and Chicago cheered, stunned.
I love the Olympics. As a child, I used to beg to stay up late to watch the end of the figure skating in the winter or the gymnastics in the summer. Now, as an adult, I can’t bear to pull my eyes from NBC in the evenings. I even listen to the commentary.
But the Olympic controversy is not lost on me. My fellow Chicagoans and I enjoyed a months-long debate over whether we even wanted the Olympics to come to our city (fortunately, the IOC decided on our behalf). Almost two years ago, I read this article in Foreign Policy by John Hoberman, which spotlights some of the myths that we believe about the Olympics: the Olympics are a moneymaker, the Olympics aren’t political, the Olympics promote human rights. It is incredible the false perceptions that we have about what the Olympics does for world peace, economic stability, and nationalism.
In addition, I have noticed that very few of my African American friends enjoy keeping up with the Winter Olympics. It could possibly be because there is very little diversity among Team USA in the winter games. In fact, only a handful of African Americans have won medals in the Winter Olympics.
So while enjoying watching the games this year, I am reminded that I need to be circumspect in my enthusiasm. There is a great deal that we can learn from these games–and not just what White’s “Double McTwist 1260″ looks like, but also how we can be realistic about what the Olympics are, what they are not, and who they are excluding.
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