For Brittney Griner, Nonstop Contempt from the Right

By Daria Nastasia, July 18, 2022

“Congrats to Brittney Griner for being drug free for 144 days!”

That recent Tweet from Tim Young, a writer for The Washington Times and a host on SiriusXM’s Patriot channel, captures perfectly the contempt and dismissive cruelty of the conservative media’s treatment of the two-time Olympic gold medalist, who is currently on trial in Russia. Griner, arrested at a Moscow airport in February when Russian authorities found vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

“Conservatives have been attacking Griner since 2020 when, to protest police brutality in the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings, the Phoenix Mercury star declared her opposition to the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner” at WNBA games.”

Attacks Intensify After Letter to Biden

But her arrest in Moscow took things to a whole new level, with right wing critics not only assuming her guilt, but also arguing that she deserves her fate. Jeff Lawson of The Blue State Conservative wondered if her fellow citizens should simply forget about plight and allow her to rot in a Russian jail as the penalty for disrespecting America.  The chilling headline of his article: “Do You Miss America Yet? What Life Behind Bars is Like for America-Hating Britney Griner.”

Conservative attacks only intensified after her July 4 handwritten letter to President Joe Biden asking the government to help bring her home. And as the Griner trial has continued in Russia and public pressure for government action to free Griner has increased in the U. S., conservatives have been mixing critiques of the Biden administration for slow action with demands for no action.

Jack Wolfsohn contended in National Review that Biden’s failure to free Griner is yet “another sign of weakness” of the current administration. “Biden’s record of freeing Americans detained abroad falls far short of Trump’s.” Representative Jim Jordan (R, OH) is quoted in the piece declaring that “Everyone knows President Trump would have negotiated Brittney Griner’s release by now.”

In an editorial, The Washington Free Beacon called for “no special treatment of Brittney Griner,” insisting that “Griner is hardly the political prisoner that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made her out to be”

Pandra Selivanov argued in a piece for the American Thinker that the U.S. government should stay out of it. “Griner chose to break Russian law by packing vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage.”  Of course, such takes not only forego the presumption of innocence but also ignore key information about the case. While Griner decided to plead guilty in the hope of securing leniency at her sentencing, samples taken from her did not show any traces of drugs. In addition, the quantity of cannabis oil for which she was detained is less than one gram, yet she was charged with large-scale transportation of drugs, and her defense maintains that the vape cartridges were packed by mistake.

The Right Plays the Race Card

Predictably, the criticism of Griner has included a familiar right wing theme. The American Thinker and The Washington Free Beacon both claimed that Griner has used her minority status to gain privilege and that she is now using it to request preferential treatment. “Unlike the United States, many other countries enforce their drug laws without reference to race, ethnicity, creed, orientation, or any of the myriad factors that offenders use in America to get a slap on the wrist,” Selivanov writes in the July 6 piece from American Thinker.

For its part, the Free Beacon demanded that “under no circumstances should the Democratic Party’s identity politics allow a black lesbian millionaire athlete who broke the law in a foreign country to receive preferential treatment – as she already is receiving – over genuinely innocent hostages long left to rot in foreign prisons.”

Even Donald Trump Jr. joined in, tweeting a photo of Griner being brought into a Moscow court for her preliminary hearing, with the words “Oh-oh, I don’t understand. My race card isn’t working here in Russia!”

Echoes of Kaepernick

The right’s treatment of Griner is an echo of the relentless attacks on another athlete of color, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, after he began kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games in 2016. While the majority of Americans in the years since have come to view professional athletes’ kneeling during the national anthem to bring attention to racial discrimination as an acceptable form of protest, significant divisions along political lines persist. More than three quarters of Republicans still consider protests against the national anthem as unacceptable.

Waiting for an Apology

Some conservatives have suggested that if Griner wants the support of the U.S. government she should admit that America is a great country and show remorse for her original protest. As Black conservative documentarian Errol Webber tweeted “I wonder what it feels like now with her begging the Red, White and Blue to come to her rescue?” The Free Beacon editorial implied: “Maybe after her brush with Russian law enforcement, she’ll realize conditions back stateside aren’t as oppressive as she made them out to be.” And conservative commentator Todd Starnes went so far as to argue that the Biden administration should leave Griner in a Russian prison until she publicly repudiates her stance on the national anthem.

It’s almost as if they’ve forgotten that Griner, like they are, is an American citizen.

Daria Nastasia is a student at the George Washington University pursuing a double major in Journalism and Mass Communication, and in Political Science

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