The Olympians were saying,
we're elite athletes at the top of
our game.
There's a lot of pressures
and all that.
I would say, let's remove some of
those pressures, for instance,
being weirdly specific about which
things you can't consume but
letting you drink as much vodka as
you want the night before or
whatever.
Let's remove some
of those pressures and
this is one of the pressures.
I'm going to move very quickly to
a couple of the other pressures
that have popped up, so
here's two other things.
One is for instance, if you are an
athlete with natural black hair and
you're swimming, well, you can't
wear the swim cap that you might
want to because it has now been
ruled out by the Olympic Games.
This particular cap,
if we could bring up the the shot,
you'll see there.
The International Swimming
Federation rejected the use
of the Soul Cap, saying it does not
fit the natural form of the head.
Which brings to mind other sort of
archaic brain sciences and
things like that.
What are you talking about?
But it is actually banned.
They said to the best of their
knowledge, the athletes competing
at the international events never
used neither require caps of such
size and configuration.
Because that should totally be up
to them, not the athletes,
whether the athletes need it.
So there's an extra pressure for
you, if you're a swimmer at that
level, or for instance,
you might feel a lot of pressure.
I really hope that my natural
testosterone level doesn't go above
this arbitrary level,
because you might get disqualified
as two Namibians were.
Christine Mboma and
Beatrice Masilingi have a naturally
high testosterone level because of
differences in sexual development
that cause them to be rejected as
some other runners, generally,
African runners have in the past.
So it's all of these weird things
that they're watching for
that I would say contribute to that
my god, we're so pressured
all the time sort of thing.
>> Yeah.
>> And of course totally
coincidentally, all of these are
more restrictive on athletes who
don't happen to be Michael Phelps
or white or whatever.
>> Now John,
there we can likely agree with very
little discord because I've vetted
those as well through my own sort
of personal computer.
And have a far easier time
describing them for what they are,
which is anti-black.
I think that with respect
to the Soul Cap story,
the safe narrative around that is
that it certainly does seem to be
discriminatory against people
who share a certain genetic trait
around how their hair grows.
Why do I say that?
I say that because typically people
who are black,
our hair grows up and out.
People who are not black,
their hair, and
it's also much coarser,
much harder to sort of tame and
maintain in a lot of ways.
So it does increase the volume of
someone's head size in the course
of wearing a hat or wearing,
in this case, a cap.
I do not know what the actual
process was in terms of making
a determination around
the Soul Cap's viability as
a permitted Olympic thing.
But what I will say is that, and
this is probably the safest,
nicest, most neutral thing I will
say about this.
The lack of transparency around
comparatively speaking
what the difference is between
a Soul Cap versus a Speedo
cap certainly leaves widespread
room for speculation.
All of which points to this
being racist and anti black,
that I have no problem conceding.
With respect to the two women from
Namibia, I will also say that that
is not only anti black but
it's specifically anti to
a specific region in Africa.
Where genetically speaking,
it has been proven and
shown that there are higher rates
of testosterone in certain women,
well, in these women.
It's a known thing about certain
regions in Africa.
So there's no question in my mind
that this bears some level
of racism, of anti blackness, and
specifically anti African, which I
think is equally problematic.
The other thing that I think
viewers should know that they may
not know, which is really weird.
The levels of testosterone
that are permissible for
women to compete in certain events,
and men, does not stay universal
across the Olympics, it changes,
which is really weird to me.
So as a woman, you could have one
testosterone level that allows you
to compete let's say for example in
the marathon or in the 800 meter.
And then that same level of
testosterone that you have
disqualifies you from competing in
the 100 or the 200.
>> Yeah. >> That
seems really backwards to me.
If either of you can sort of make
a case to me why that should be
the case, I'm all ears.
But as I thought about this, and
how I felt about it, that fact
defied logic for me in a way that I
just could not reconcile.
>> Yeah, so look, this is going to
get absurd real quick,
because there's some chance that
Ethiopians and Kenyans have
different lung capacity.
Are we going to disqualify them
from marathons for
having the abnormal lungs?
It's absurd.
Well, then what
are we going to do next?
Usain Bolt,
he's just abnormally fast.
We're going to ban him.
[LAUGH] Well, isn't that kind of
the whole point, right?
[LAUGH] And so look guys,
everybody's against cheating.
We want it to be fair, so
we don't want them taking illegal
substances, that drives
everybody nuts including all of us,
all three of us, right?
And so we want them to be careful.
But as quickly as I can on the Soul
Cap, now if I was in charge of
that, I would say, okay, guys, if
we're going to call black people's
heads abnormal, we better really
have our stuff together, right?
So you better tell me why this cap
performs better, that it leads to
an unnatural and unfair advantage.
So give me some sort of evidence on
that because we're
about to go public, right?
And then we better have another
thing ready, which is here,
here's your second option.
The Speedo cap doesn't fit you,
we acknowledge that, so
here's another cap you can use.
They didn't do either of those two,
in my mind, super obvious things.
Instead they were like,
I don't know, man, I guess you guys
have abnormal heads, and you have
no other options and we don't care.
No, that's it.
We're banning it.
Well, okay, well,
then screw you because you've given
yourself no out.
I don't know why they're doing it.
I don't know if they have
a sponsorship deal with Speedo or
something.
But this is obviously outrageous,
and how could they not see that
it's going to lead to correct
accusations of discrimination?
>> Yeah.