The release of an American imprisoned in Russia should be a joyous occasion. And that Brittney Griner is back home with her family is, indeed, a wonderful thing. So why then is it so controversial? Even worse. why are so many upset by it?
There is the question of whether the one-for-one prisoner swap for arms dealer Victor Bout was a good deal, but that emits the unpleasant odor of rationalization. Few gave any thought to Bout until his name was highlighted in this swap, and suddenly he’s so important that his continued imprisonment for another seven years until his sentenced was served is more critical than this swap? It may not have been a good deal, but that’s not what’s really bugging people.
And then there are the other Americans who remain imprisoned in Russia, Paul Whelan and Marc Fogel. And then there was California teacher Sarah Krivanek who also just got out of Russia, though no one was swapped for her and few have ever heard her name. What about these Americans? But then, if the same trade had occurred for Whelan or Fogel, would the same argument not be valid to ask “What about Griner?” If the best that could be done was securing the release of one, why Whelan instead of Griner? Isn’t Griner instead of Whelan no less reasonable, even if unfortunate?
Of course, Griner isn’t entirely without responsibility for her circumstance. She had the hash oil vapes in her bag as she tried to make it out of Russia, something she says she forgot about and there is no reason to doubt her. But forgetting doesn’t mean it’s any less illegal under Russian law, and few would be quite so forgetful when leaving Russia knowing how severe they can be about drugs and foreigners.
And it’s not as if we can’t be harsh in our treatment of other country’s nationals, not to mention our own, when it comes to drugs (and many other things). When we lock the citizens of other nations away for decades, is it entirely different than when Russia does? Well sure it is, because we’re the world’s shiny light of freedom country and Russia is the evil empire. But I digest.
So what made this release, this swap, this exchange that freed an American from the gulag anything other than cause for celebration?
A considerable amount of attention was also paid to who Ms. Griner is: a Black woman, a celebrity, a married lesbian and, though it had gone largely unnoticed until now, an assertive liberal — one who, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, called to stop playing the national anthem at her team’s basketball games.
The list of attributes following Griner’s name in this paragraph reflects things that none of the other Americans imprisoned abroad can claim. They are merely Americans. Isn’t that good enough?
But Ms. Griner’s case has gone beyond such calculations, into the fraught arenas of race, gender and sexual orientation, and at a time of make-no-concessions partisanship, when large swaths of the American public are steeped in the grievance politics and adversary demonization of Mr. Trump and his acolytes.
It’s certainly true that the right harped on Griner’s personal characteristics, but then the left gave cause to do so. If you’re going to extol her release because she’s a “gay, black woman,” then you can’t complain when someone points out that the reason Griner was the one for whom Bout was traded is not because she is a worthier American, but because she is a “gay, black woman.”
“There’s that underlying sense that this is part of the Democrats’ focusing on someone who is sympathetic to them and leaving a Marine behind,” said David Silbey, a military historian at Cornell University. “It fits nicely in the narrative that a lot of the right is telling America, about who gets the privilege in Biden’s America.”
The release of an American from Russian custody should be a good thing, and yet the nagging sense that the administration’s efforts to obtain Griner’s release was not because she was a worthier American than Paul Whelan or Marc Fogel, but because Griner had the trifecta of woke traits, “gay, black woman.” Conversely, Whelan and Fogel were straight, white men, so they were left behind, lacking the identities that are valued sufficiently to make them worthy of either a trade for Bout or to hold firm with Putin until an arms dealer’s release worth more than a women’s basketball player who had hash oil in her vape pen.
As much as her fame and prominence made her incarceration intolerable to some Americans, Ms. Griner’s gender may be coloring the exchange in the eyes of some critics, Professor Silbey suggested.
Much as the WNBA doesn’t manage to find its way onto most Americans’ radar until it does, Griner was very much a star player and, to the extent any women’s basketball player can be termed a “celebrity,” a celebrity even if only to those who followed such things.
The response to her arrest in Moscow on extremely minor drug charges — and especially to her release — would have been wildly different if they had happened to her male equivalent, he said.
“If LeBron James had been grabbed by Russia at an airport and sent to a prison camp,” Professor Silbey said, “imagine the level of hysteria that would have caused.”
This is likely true, though untested and consequently relegated to the vagary of “imagine” since there is no basis to prove King James would have been treated differently. But then, if true, as it likely is, would it be because LeBron was a straight male or black or because he was a celebrity whose name was far more widely recognized than Griner’s? And even if true, as it likely is, does that make his life more valued than Whelan’s and Fogel’s?
But Griner isn’t LeBron James, and yet she was the one American traded for Victor Bout when others were not. Whether this was a product of her celebrity, her high profile advocates, or her being a “gay, black woman,” the sense that the determination was made because of race, gender and sexual orientation taints what should be a great thing,that an American was repatriated, and this time, the American was Brittney Griner.
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