SC’s Dawn Staley shows grace in the face of unfair questions

Daybreak Staley has introduced extra honor and excellence to South Carolina than most individuals in current reminiscence. And but after her newest historic achievement, she needed to reply questions on whether or not the College of South Carolina ladies’s basketball workforce she leads is patriotic. I couldn’t assist take into consideration that as photos of the workforce, recent off its second nationwide title underneath Staley, being greeted as conquering heroes within the Common Meeting started circulating Wednesday. I’m blissful the workforce is being celebrated. They’ve earned it. I’m saddened, although, that excellence typically isn’t sufficient.

Days earlier than the Gamecocks would win its matchup towards the College of Connecticut, the Enterprise Insider reported that the national anthem wasn’t played at Colonial Life Arena during Gamecock games this season. (The report was corrected to say that the workforce isn’t on the court docket when the anthem was performed.) The implication was clear, the workforce and Staley have been unpatriotic, which is why Staley needed to take time in the course of the celebration of an unprecedented second nationwide title by a black coach in main males’s or ladies’s basketball to elucidate that it was merely about timing, when the workforce leaves the court docket for warmups and after they come again to start the sport vs. when the anthem is performed.

The Enterprise Insider story led to days of Staley and the workforce being known as ugly names. (They stood throughout video games on the highway.)

“After which the opposite articles come out from that, after which we’re known as unpatriotic, we’re known as — among the nastiness, and it’s as a result of we’re a predominantly Black workforce,” Staley advised reporters.

Staley had simply completed what nobody earlier than her had been capable of accomplish. She had completed it with poise and sophistication. It’s clear she’s probably the most efficient leaders within the state, the type that residents ought to be proud represents South Carolina. She’s the embodiment of onerous work and excellence, a task mannequin’s function mannequin. However for some, that wasn’t sufficient. She and her gamers have been alleged to toe a line, to know their place, to not make white of us uncomfortable. And when it was perceived that they hadn’t, distinctive efficiency on the highest degree wasn’t sufficient for them to not must endure the slings and arrows far too many earlier than them needed to endure whereas making an attempt to drive this nation to stay as much as its said beliefs.

Through the 2020-21 season, the peak of the George Floyd-related protests, many Gamecock gamers sat in the course of the nationwide anthem to “shine a lightweight on the necessity for racial equality, social justice and ending systemic racism in our nation” whereas at the very least one selected to face to spotlight a member of the family’s navy service. There was nothing mistaken with a few of them utilizing that platform then to boost necessary points, nothing mistaken with them selecting to face when the possibility arose this season, together with in the course of the Remaining 4.

It ought to be misplaced on nobody that lots of the legislators congratulating and snapping footage with Gamecocks gamers this week are amongst those that push legal guidelines and concepts that produce the ugly atmosphere Staley was compelled to handle. Their anti-1619, anti-CRT rhetoric and payments reinforce the concept black persons are ungrateful if we don’t purchase into their definition of patriotism, that we’ve completed a grave disservice to our nation for not merely going together with racial myths we’ve lengthy been fed in our faculties, in our historical past books, chiseled into statues and monuments devoted to males who beat and raped and robbed us of dignity and freedom.

That’s why I’m glad Staley took the time to handle it, as soon as once more displaying poise underneath strain. I’m simply hoping at some point women and men like her will now not must.

Issac Bailey is a McClatchy opinion author primarily based in Myrtle Seashore.