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    • Having arrived safely home, Brittney Griner encounters even more hate in the USA
    Massachusetts

    Having arrived safely home, Brittney Griner encounters even more hate in the USA

    Idris Bevan Posted on

    Paola Boivin
    | Specially for the Arizona Republic

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    A week ago, an ejected and dejected Brittney Griner sat in the Mercury locker room during a game against the Los Angeles Sparks and responded to Instagram posts calling her a man and questioning her toughness in Russia.

    It was the typical social media sludge of faceless, soulless posters flexing their muscles while expressing their bigotry and lies.

    On the day of what could be the Mercury’s final game of the season, it’s time to stop the hate. Show some leniency. While we celebrate Diana Taurasi for her successful career, we also celebrate Griner’s strong 2024 season, her second since she spent 293 days in Russian prisons.

    She persevered. Once again.

    Why are people still flocking to the scene almost two years after their release?

    Griner’s book, “Coming Home,” published in May, describes not only the mental and physical pain she endured during her imprisonment, but also the challenges she faced growing up.

    That’s why I started hooping. I felt really visible. And I felt less like an outsider… When you’re flat-chested in eighth grade, people talk. Girls in the locker room point at you and whisper, “Is she a boy, a lesbian, a freak? Why is her voice so quiet?”

    Basketball also gave me some relaxation during my studies.

    If you’re 6’1″ and wearing size 10 men’s sneakers, you don’t fit in. Not in cars. Not on chairs. Not in beds. Not in crowds. And certainly not in a world that confuses you with what it fears most: a black man.

    Stop wondering who Griner is and just let her be. People come out of the womb different. In middle school, she was tall and had a deep voice. Her parents were worried she had a tumor on her pituitary gland, and she succumbed to the role of lab rat. She had to deal with constant bullying.

    Basketball changed everything. As a sophomore in high school, she made a dunk that went viral on YouTube and suddenly she had an identity, support and respect.

    It led her to the WNBA, where she helped expand the audience for women’s basketball. But because the league can’t compete with salaries in other countries, Griner, like many of the U.S.’s top players, played overseas, where she earned over a million dollars a year – as opposed to the $220,000 the Mercury paid her in 2022.

    This February, her life took an incredible turn.

    Yes, she was stupid. On the way to her overseas performance in Russia, she forgot that she had left two vape pens containing 0.7 grams of medically prescribed cannabis in her backpack.

    Officials discovered it after she landed in Moscow.

    A nine-year sentence for drug smuggling and possession six months after her arrest is hardly appropriate for the crime, and anyone who argues otherwise is looking at the matter through distorted glasses. Her lawyer told her that half of the 36 trials in Russia this year for the same crime ended with a suspended sentence for the defendant.

    She was a puppet in a country that wanted to make a statement, and yet many continue to believe she got what she deserved.

    Did she deserve the humiliation?

    “Out,” the doctor ordered. I looked at him, speechless. Out? “All out,” he repeated. Shocked and humiliated, I took off my boxers. Then my socks. Even my glasses. I didn’t cover my private parts, nor did I crouch or tremble. I just tried to escape my body, to pretend I wasn’t there. Two guards exchanged glances. The rest stared. I could tell they expected me to fall apart, some weak American. I stood upright while the doctor snapped photos and motioned for me to turn around. Front. Back. Sideways. Click. I felt like crying, but I had no tears left.

    Did she deserve slave labor?

    We all worked different shifts, depending on our work, but Russian labor camps are called that for a reason. All inmates work 10, 12, or 15 hours or more a day. We earned a few rubles an hour, about 25 cents. … I worked in the sewing department, in a factory-like building with rows and rows of Soviet-era machines. There was no ventilation and hardly any heating. No bathroom breaks. We knew we had to empty our bladders during the 20-minute lunch break. Each group was given a quota, about 500 military uniforms a day. Teams that failed to produce this were verbally abused.

    Did she deserve this humiliation?

    The shower was a tiny tiled cubicle behind a screen. I was too tall, so I crouched behind the screen, scooping water over my dreadlocks and trying to clean myself. All the while, the bathroom was humming. It was one big open room with four toilets facing each other and six sinks that all 50 of us shared. I saw a lot I didn’t want to see, and the room stank, as did most women.

    In prison, she eventually cut her hair short because the conditions caused her curls to become tangled, frozen, and eventually moldy.

    People called her anti-American.

    Huh?

    • She often spoke about her patriotism.
    • Her father fought in Vietnam and was a police officer for 30 years.
    • She grew up wanting to be like him.
    • She firmly believes in a country that her father worked hard to defend.
    • She firmly believes that defunding the police is NOT appropriate.

    And if you have a problem with Griner coming home thanks to a prisoner swap involving a Russian arms dealer, take issue with the government, not Griner. To this day, she works with Bring Our Families Home, a group founded in 2022 by the families of American hostages and prisoners wrongfully held abroad.

    Her return home was joyful but not easy. She had trouble sleeping. She faced the worst trolls on social media.

    However, she is still a joy to watch on the basketball court and still interacts with the fans. Sometimes you still see that childlike personality shine through.

    So give her a break. Show her some leniency. Celebrate a woman who has had to fight bullying her entire life.

    And if that doesn’t work, take your weak recordings somewhere else.

    Paola Boivin is a former columnist for the Arizona Republic and now a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

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    Idris Bevan
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