Opinion: Sha’Carri Richardson says she’s now embracing the most important cause of all

Editor’s note: Amira Rose Davis is an assistant professor who teaches in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she specializes in 20th century American history with an emphasis on race, gender, sports and politics. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

Black women athletes have long been hyper-scrutinized: Their bodies, hair, outfits as well as their celebrations, emotions and even their activism are not merely picked apart on social media and in the press, but they sometimes have been disciplined by the very leagues, federations and governing bodies for which they play.

Perhaps that is why their wins resonate so deeply. Black women’s athletic triumphs are celebrated as an embodiment of #blackgirlmagic — the ability, emphatically, to conjure up success in spite of the misogynoir they experience.

Amid the scrutiny and the celebration, an athlete’s personhood is sometimes forgotten, and must be wrested back. One athlete for whom this is abundantly true is Sha’Carri Richardson.

Last month, as she stood in her lane preparing to run at the US Track and Field Outdoor Championships, Richardson looked very much like she did two years ago: orange hair and long nails, and brimming with confidence.

As she stood on the track as her name was called, she reached up and peeled off her wig, tossing it to the side and revealing long braids. “I had to shed the old and present the new,” Richardson told an interviewer after the race, at which she was crowned America’s national sprinting champion at the 100-meter distance.

This was a new Sha’Carri Richardson.

Over the past week, at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary, Richardson has taken the transformation a step further. The track star has not simply authored a dramatic comeback story of athletic success, but she has taken control of her own narrative as well.

The 23-year-old Dallas native — a standout track star at Louisiana State University before turning pro — is part of an emergent generation of Black women athletes who are showing up unapologetically as their full selves. They are not interested in contorting themselves to fit the prescribed boxes or in flattening themselves into perfect inspiring symbols. They are ever evolving, growing and creating space in sport for their humanity.

“It almost seems like we [Black women] have to be superheroes,” Richardson said last year, “It’s just irritating because you take away the abilities, you take away the speed, you take away the talent … and we’re still human.”

The biennial world track and field championships, which conclude on Sunday, gather the best athletes from 202 nations and over nine days of competitions to crown the fastest miler and marathoner, the most accomplished pole vaulter and long jumper — the best athletes, in short, in a total of 49 disciplines. It is the highest level of competition in track and field, with the exception of the Olympics.

In the weeks leading up to the competition, Richardson announced that she had stepped up her game. Her mantra became, “I’m not back, I’m better,” as she won race after race during the 2023 spring and summer track and field season.

During her debut appearance at this year’s world championships, Richardson put an exclamation mark on her now oft-quoted saying, earning a gold medal in the 100-meter sprint, a bronze in the 200-meter race, and anchoring a quartet of American sprinters to a gold medal in the 4x100 meter relay.

Without question, the high point of Richardson’s championships was her triumph in the women’s 100-meter sprint in a championship record and personal best time, a huge win in the sport’s marquee event. Her win was one of a handful of victories at the championships that also heralded America’s return to sprinting glory after years of being bested by the Jamaican national team — a sprinting powerhouse.

The past several days of being lifted up as a hero of women’s sprinting in America follow frustrating years of seeming unfilled promise and personal setbacks for Richardson. Two years ago, her blazing speed, bright hair, long nails and outspoken confidence captured everyone’s attention at the US Olympic trials.

Within two weeks, however, much of the attention had turned negative, as she tested positive for marijuana. The young phenom found herself suspended from the US team and missing the Olympics.

Her suspension reignited debates about the use of cannabis in sports and whether she was being too harshly sanctioned for use of a substance that is finding greater acceptance and that doesn’t give athletes who use it a competitive advantage.

Richardson explained at the time that she was reeling from the grief after the death of her mother —  a loss apparently compounded by having Olympic dreams dashed. Online, her sometimes brash dismissal of other track athletes invited more scorn — particularly from supporters of the Jamaican team.

When she returned to track two months after the Olympic trials fiasco, she finished last. Some saw it as a deserved comeuppance for a young star who needed to be knocked back to earth. Others doubted that she would ever be able to rebound.

The past several days in Budapest was Sha’Carri Richardson’s redemption. In triumphing over adversity and silencing her critics, she has shown profound inner reserves of strength and determination, patience and maturity.

But her growth is not for others; it is in pursuit of her own peace. “I’m not worried about the world anymore,” she said in an interview minutes after being crowned the winner of the 100-meter race in Budapest last week. “I’ve seen the world be my friend. I’ve seen the world turn on me. But at the end of the day, I’ve always been with me.”

Richardson is very vocal about issues facing track and field athletes. She has become a prominent voice for athletes’ rights and better compensation, calling out the pay structure in track and field, the paltry media attention the sport is given and the need for better governance of the sport.

She joins other Black women athletes on the track, in the field and beyond who are not content to shut up and play. From Simone Biles to Naomi Osaka, Midge Purce to Dearica Hamby, Black women athletes continue to transform sport by insisting on better treatment, greater attention to issues of Black Maternal health care, mental health, physical and sexual abuse, equitable resources and respect — on and off their fields of play.

Richardson is very proud to be among prominent Black women athletes and fiercely celebrates Black womanhood. She has said her mission is to advance Black excellence, regardless of nationality. Indeed this week she has shared hugs, smiles, laughs, jokes and podiums with her fiercest rivals while preaching unity and positivity.

She said, wisely, after winning the 100-meter race that the most important cause she’s embracing is herself.

“It’s always been my time, but now it’s my time to actually do it for myself and the people that feel like me, the people that look like me, and the people that know the truth about themselves as well. I represent those people.”

In a world where Black girls are so often disposable, where grace is rare and growth not always allowed, a large part of the exuberance of watching Richardson win is the celebration of watching someone descend into the valley and make it back out again, true to themselves and on their own terms.

But make no mistake, Richardson is still boisterous. She is still confident. She is still quick to correct reporters who say her name wrong, and she is still rocking long nails and colorful hair. Richardson’s return is not a rebuke of who she was before. In her own words, she is “still that girl.” She has just settled into herself — and her joy is palpable.

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