Why Does Erin Jackson’s Race Matter?

The Olympic speed skater’s win is being defined by her skin color.

So just to be clear, I know absolutely nothing about “speed skating” other than the quick facts I’ve looked up to write this article. In fact, I try to pay as little attention as possible to the Olympic games and its faux significance, but of course, some news is inevitably going to slip through the cracks. And in recent news, I’ve seen that speed skater Erin Jackson has become the first American woman to win the Olympic gold in that category since 1994, as has been stated in a Slate article on the subject.

And that’s just the way it should be. Good for her accomplishment, I have zilch interest in it but that’s just fine. However, much of the media is reporting that Jackson is the first black woman to win an individual medal for Olympic speed skating in the 62-year-old 500-meter category (this translates to them holding 17 competitions total since then if I’m not mistaken).

I’m simply baffled why this is relevant in 2022, where we should all be well aware that race is a social construct and doesn’t actually “exist.” In some cases, perhaps race could be relevant to discuss in the context of areas where black representation is noticeably inadequate despite high interest from the black population. This would also be the case for positions where black representation is critical for the functioning of our society (medicine, politics, education, etc.).

However, speed skating has no real importance, nor is it presumably a dream sought after by a substantial number of American blacks, as I doubt it’s a very popular sport in America in general. According to Wikipedia, it is popular in the Netherlands, Norway, and South Korea, and it originated in Scandinavia and the Netherlands; these are all countries with an extremely small percentage of black populations. Therefore, we would expect that culturally, speed skating is understandably unpopular with most black people relative to other sports that have higher representation, in their already smaller populations within America.

Speed skating, in general, was added to the Olympic program in 1924 (for men). Why would we have the expectation that there should be a lot of black people participating in Olympic speed skating since its conception? And if we shouldn’t, then why does it matter? We don’t need to be keeping tabs on the “first black person” for every, single, event that exists.

I actually feel that in a way, this fixation on race just serves to add credence to the “othering” of black people that they often express dismay over, as though they are a strange sight doing a particular activity or succeeding in it. Whether or not that is true, I believe that the potential harm is greater than the potential benefits of defining someone’s achievement in part by their race.

For those who adopt the current philosophy that “representation matters”, what really matters is understanding that the fictional concept of “race” actually doesn’t matter and should be holding no one back from doing what they love. It’s more important for black people to see humans speed skating, not white people speed skating, and decide they want to participate in it simply because it feels right.