These cases were in the news every day. You would have to be willfully ignorant to not be aware of them. The day after Philando Castile was shot and killed, a man protesting against his death and the deaths of other black men in police custody opened fire on police officers in Dallas, killing five and injuring nine. America felt like a country at war.
I had never spoken about racism publicly before, not because I didn’t feel strongly about it, but because it had simply never occurred to me. I don’t like to wade into something unless I know what I’m talking about, and I hesitated because racism wasn’t “my issue.” I couldn’t speak about it with the same force of personal experience I brought to LGBTQ politics, pay equity, and sexism, and so I didn’t speak about it at all.
But Ferguson changed that. Michael Brown’s death two years earlier at the hands of a white police officer sparked a huge outpouring of protest and anger. Reading around the case, I’d been astonished by what I learned. His death was not about a single racist officer. It wasn’t even about a racist police department. The roots of Michael Brown’s death lay in an entire civic and criminal justice system that had been set up to abuse black people. The police department in Ferguson ran a for-profit system, in which every year the town’s populace was issued thousands of fines for minor infractions, including jaywalking and minor driving violations. The figures were staggering. In 2013, in a city of 21,135 people, the municipal court in Ferguson issued 32,975 arrest warrants, the majority of them to black people. When Officer Darren Wilson stopped Michael Brown that day in 2014, it was to tell him to get off the road and walk on the sidewalk, an exchange that ended with the teenager being shot and killed. Michael Brown’s death wasn’t a glitch in the system. It was the system.
I wanted to read more and turned to someone I knew could help. Jess Dolan had joined my team of agents in 2015, and we had connected instantly. She was my age and grew up in Chico, California, a small town seventy miles south of Redding—our high school basketball teams had even played each other. After being raised by liberal, schoolteacher parents, Jess had studied at Berkeley, an environment that fueled her political activism. Like me, her political jumping-off point was LGBTQ rights, something with which she had a deep, personal connection. From there, she started to see how gay rights joined up with other social justice campaigns.
With Jess as my mentor, I started to read more widely. In the wake of Ferguson, I read every piece on racial injustice that came out in the press. I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power, which includes his hugely influential piece about the case for reparations, first published in The Atlantic. In hotel rooms after games and on the bus to and from airports, Jess and I talked about the wider implications of what I was reading. There was no one else in my life in soccer—or anywhere, for that matter—who I could level with in these conversations, and I was hungry to discuss and read more.
Slowly, the dots started connecting. There was no point campaigning for one cause without laying it on the line for another. When I came out, the support of the athletic community and the straight world more generally—the media, the sports world, the business world of my sponsors—was huge. Those who are discriminated against shouldn’t have to fight alone, and leaving advocacy to the marginalized group itself—the group most at risk of dismissal or reprisal—is, frankly, outrageous. As the summer wore on and Black Lives Matter became more prominent, I felt as if everyone had a duty to join.
Part of that effort lay in education. Thanks to my reading, I was developing a better understanding of the sheer depth of racial discrimination in America. White supremacy is not a redneck bumper sticker or a Confederate flag flying in some old guy’s yard in the South. It’s not even the KKK or someone using the n-word. White supremacy is the foundation on which our nation is built. Every decision, every law, every piece of legislation that has been passed since the very beginning has operated under the system of white supremacy—putting one race over another to keep power in the hands of a small minority of white men, by ensuring others are classified as “less than.”
After slavery ended, and in spite of ongoing segregation, there was a period during which black Americans actually started to thrive. Greenwood, a section of Tulsa, was known as “black Wall Street,” where in the absence of white violence, the black community was robust and black businesses prospered. In June 1921, mobs of resentful white residents raided Greenwood, burned it to the ground, and massacred hundreds of black people. Two years later, in Rosewood, Florida—a prosperous black town—history repeated: a white mob invaded the town, razed homes and businesses to the ground, and massacred the townspeople. The fact that the Tulsa and Rosewood massacres are barely taught in schools is not an oversight.
And so it went on. Ten years after Tulsa and Greenwood, the federal government dug people out of the Depression via the New Deal—only they didn’t dig everyone out. Omitted from teachings about the New Deal is the fact that many of the mortgages, bailouts, and loans provided by the government systematically excluded people of color. In 1941, black people joined the army and went to war, and when they came home, black service members were excluded from grants covered by the GI Bill. Low-interest loans aren’t much use when banks won’t lend to black people, just as college tuition isn’t much use in Southern colleges that only admit whites. In the 1950s and ’60s, as white people started to buy homes and build wealth, the Federal Housing Administration refused to insure mortgages in black neighborhoods, a policy known as “redlining.” Meanwhile, the same authority subsidized entire housing developments that were by law only available to white people.
For black Americans, there have never been gains without backlash. The civil rights era brought about voting rights acts that enfranchised millions of people, so what does the government do? Starts introducing laws that lead to the mass incarceration of black people, so now one in three black men can’t vote. After reading everything I could about social and racial injustice, it became clear to me not only how deep the roots of white supremacy went, but also that it was the system from which all other inequalities came. This was a huge light bulb moment: realizing that we’re not free until we’re all free; that it wasn’t a question of protesting against racial injustice as if it were my own cause, but doing so because this was also my fight.
In July, members of the WNBA launched their protest. By the end of the month, the hashtag #blacklivesmatter had hit one million mentions. And on August 26, Colin Kaepernick sat down. The quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers refused to stand for the national anthem before a home preseason game, telling the media afterward, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” A week later, after a conversation with Nate Boyer, the former NFL player and Green Beret who suggested that kneeling was more inspiring than sitting, Colin knelt during the anthem and was booed by the fans. Four days after that, the head of the NFL all but accused him of being unpatriotic. When the story blew up, it was obvious to me what I needed to do.
* * *
—
The first action I took was so discreet the only person who saw it was Sue.
To backtrack: after the Olympics, when we all got back to Seattle, Sue and I had met up. It was a group dinner and the vibe was totally platonic, not least because Sera, my fiancée, was there. We discovered that day that Sue and I were due to play in Chicago for our respective teams during the same week in September, and several weeks later I headed to the airport to meet up with my team. At check-in, one of my teammates, who was dating a player on Sue’s WNBA team, turned to me and said, “Oh, I’m going to the basketball game tonight and have tick—” Before she could even finish I’d shouted, “I want to go!” I should’ve known then. Never in a million years would I land from a flight and drive forty-five minutes to see someone else play, and yet I found myself desperate to go. That night, I showed up for Sue’s game.
The match was bet
ween Seattle Storm, Sue’s team, and Chicago Sky, and when the anthem started to play, I remained seated. It was the day after Colin first knelt and I hadn’t told anyone I wasn’t going to stand up, but I also hadn’t not told anyone. It wasn’t planned. It was a reflex reaction—outrage on Colin’s behalf, a desire to show solidarity, and the conviction that what he’d done made total sense. In 2016, young black men aged fifteen to thirty-four were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police. Of all the unarmed people killed by police in 2016, 34 percent were black men (who make up 6 percent of the population). How could any reasonable person believe Colin and other protesters didn’t have a point?
I thought no one had noticed. Recently, however, Sue told me that she’d looked up from the court, spotted me sitting, and knew precisely what I was doing. The fact that she noticed, understood, and still had the discretion to not bombard me with questions tells you everything you need to know about what happened next.
After the game, Sue and I met up. I already knew she was funny and thoughtful. And of course I knew she was beautiful. But while I was excited to connect with someone on what felt like a deep level, what I remember most about that night was how calm it was. Sue’s from Syosset, New York, and was raised in a happy, liberal household by parents who completely supported her. She’s totally chill, powerfully rational, and, unlike me, not remotely impulsive, so while she loves New York, she always says if she could move her entire family and friend group to Seattle, she would—the Pacific Northwest better suits her personality. We didn’t do anything but talk that night—there was no physical overlap with my fiancée back in Seattle, but if I’m honest, there was an emotional one. Before parting, I told Sue I’d be on the road with the team for another week, and when I got home, I’d figure things out with Sera. She was calm about that, too. “All I ask is that you let me know,” she said. By the time I saw Sue again, I was single. I was also splashed all over the news.
* * *
—
After kneeling for the first time before the league game in Chicago, I knelt again a few days later in Maryland. Once again, the furor was instantaneous and huge. White people were mad. Whew, were they mad! Conservative commentators in the media immediately started shouting and yelling that kneeling during the anthem disrespected the military. (You want to talk about the military? Military members die every year because they don’t have access to health care and the government doesn’t adequately fund them. In 2015, it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of veterans had died before their applications to the VA for care were even processed, and racial discrimination has always pervaded veterans’ programs. You want to talk about the fucking military?) The owner of the Washington Spirit, who changed the pregame schedule so the anthem played while we were still in the locker room, later accused me of “hijacking” the game. When I told journalists I was kneeling to draw attention to white supremacy and police brutality, a lot of white people took it incredibly personally. I found this bizarre. It wasn’t their fault as individuals that slavery happened, but it was the responsibility of all of us to address it.
I hadn’t been expecting anything like this scale of outrage. When I’d campaigned for LGBTQ rights or pay equity, I had always been warmly received. I knew racism was different—just look at what happened to the players in the WNBA who, after staging their T-shirt protest in July, had been fined, individually and as a team, by their league. It was only after a public outcry that the fines were suspended. As Tina Charles, one of the best basketball players in the world, pointed out, wearing breast cancer ribbons to raise awareness was fine; raising awareness of racism—in a league in which 70 percent of the players were black—was not.
There were far fewer black Americans in soccer than basketball, and when I joined Colin’s protest, I knew that my whiteness and the whiteness of my sport in general probably offered some degree of immunity. I was also a woman—loud, yes, but small, pale, and, in the eyes of a lot of angry white men, relatively unthreatening. Even something like hair probably came into play; Colin’s hair, an Afro, was much bigger than my hair and, along with the rest of him, simply took up more space. To his detractors, Colin was the embodiment of the racist stereotype of the aggressive black male. To my own, I assumed I’d be little more than an irritant.
In the days after kneeling, I realized I had called it wrong. There is a particular kind of baffled outrage reserved by white people for other white people they consider to be “betraying” their race, and that week I felt the full force of it. The criticism kept coming. I was told I was misusing the freedom the US military had fought to give me, which—news flash!—is not how freedom works. Hate mail poured into my agent’s office. People called for me to be fired from the team. My social media feeds filled up with abuse.
My mom called. At Jack’s, where she worked, the management had taken down a montage of photos of me they’d had up behind the bar, after customers had started complaining. It had been a bit awkward, she said, but she believed in an owner’s right to do what he liked with his business, which I reluctantly agreed with. “I get it,” she said to me on the phone. “Racism is alive and well, and I totally support what you’re saying. But couldn’t you have found another vehicle?”
“Mom, there was no other vehicle with this kind of impact,” I said. Using a symbol of America to call out America was the whole point. The anthem belonged to those of us protesting, too. Besides which, no matter what shape protests against racism take, they are always met with the accusation that while the principle might be right, the execution is wrong. I just wasn’t interested.
My sister Jenny called. She’d had to unfriend a bunch of people after they’d posted bitchy items about me on social media. She, too, thought I’d been too provocative. “You could be setting yourself up for people not to listen anymore,” she said. But when people posted abusive messages online, she flew to my defense. “You will not say bad things about my family,” she told those who attacked me. “I will cut you out.” Jenny is the scariest of us all in some ways. This wasn’t an idle threat.
Of everyone in my family, it was Rachael, on holiday in the Alps, who agreed most unequivocally with what I’d done, but she was still pissed I hadn’t given her due warning. This was a complaint I heard over and over; that I hadn’t thought things through, that I hadn’t planned for what might happen after my protest began. I understood my family’s concern. But I also thought this criticism was an expression of privilege. For black people, the effects of protesting against police brutality couldn’t be mitigated through planning. For millions of Americans, there was no luxury of “choice” around the issue of racism, and if my actions had caused stress among those for whom this wasn’t the case, maybe that was no bad thing.
* * *
—
Jill and I had gotten along fine during the Olympics. For those few weeks in Brazil, there had been no question of me starting most games, which had taken the stress out of our relationship. When we got back to the US, I was in the final stages of recovery. All I needed to do was play.
Coaching is a hard job. To be around a team of elite, confident women, you have to be as big and bold as they are, and if you’re not, it’s blood in the water. Jill, it seemed to me, was all over the place. She would lay out the red carpet for some players, then yank them for no apparent reason. After Ali Krieger was injured in 2015, Jill would try out someone new, let them play for a while, and when they didn’t do well—which was almost inevitable, straight off the bat—she’d cut them. It was devastating for those players, and it also pissed off a lot of other people on the team who’d been grinding away for years without getting anywhere.
The first national team game I played after kneeling was a friendly against Thailand in Ohio. Before the game, I had a conversation with Jill and two media officers—one from the team, one from US Soccer. It was a short, amicable conversation in which they asked the inevitable question—is t
here any way you can protest without kneeling?—to which I said no. When they said OK, I felt broadly supported.
Once you start protesting, things quickly get complicated. Before the game, I tried to figure out what I was going to do. If I knelt for the American anthem as planned, was I going to stand for the Thai anthem, when Thailand’s human rights record was far from perfect? On the other hand, I’m not a citizen of that country and protesting their rights wasn’t my responsibility. On the other hand, we’re all citizens of the world. And so it went, round and round in my head.
In the end, I stood for the Thai anthem and knelt for my own, and a few days later, US Soccer came out with a statement that might as well have had “Dear Megan” at the top of it. “Representing your country is a privilege and honor for any player or coach that is associated with US Soccer’s National Teams,” it said. “In front of national and often global audiences, the playing of our national anthem is an opportunity for our Men’s and Women’s National Team players and coaches to reflect upon the liberties and freedom we all appreciate in this country. As part of the privilege to represent your country, we have an expectation that our players and coaches will stand and honor our flag while the national anthem is played.”
We were at the airport on the way to Atlanta for another game when news of the statement pinged on my phone. In a fury, I went to find Jill. “Have you seen this?” I said. “This is bullshit.” The whole thing was absurd. Of course I understood the expectation was that we would stand during the anthem. No shit, that’s the whole point of not standing. If we weren’t supposed to stand, kneeling would hardly constitute a protest. And what had been the point of meeting with the federation’s media rep if they were going to issue this statement? It was on US Soccer, not Jill—and to be fair she hadn’t signed up for any of this—but in that moment I could’ve used some shared outrage. Instead, later that day, I found myself apologizing to Jill for my intemperance.
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