Brittney Griner’s Race and Sexuality Are Irrelevant

Brittney Griner, the WNBA player held as a prisoner in Russia for nearly ten months after being arrested for entering the country with a small amount of hash oil, is now back on American soil and feeling “upbeat, thankful and hopeful,” according to her agent. If only more of her supporters were feeling the same.

Griner is black, female, and lesbian — none of which is relevant to her imprisonment and release, effected through a prisoner swap, but all of which have been seized on by commentators obsessed by identity politics. Tayo Bero, writing in the Guardian prior to Griner’s release, maintained that her imprisonment was “a stunning indictment of how America continues to fail Black women — both on and off its shores.”