WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 08: Cherelle Griner (C), wife of Olympian and WNBA player Brittney Griner, ... [+]
With her wife Cherelle by his side, U.S. President Joe Biden announced Thursday that six-time WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner had just been released from a Russian penal colony. Griner was serving a nine-year prison sentence for carrying less than 0.7 grams of cannabis oil through a Russian airport last February. Not everyone is thrilled that the Biden Administration prioritized the release of a Black American woman who earned two Olympic gold medals for Team USA.
Paul Whelan, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who completed tours of duty in Iraq, is serving a 16-year prison sentence in Russia for espionage. During his visit there for a wedding in 2018, Whelan was given a flash drive that contained classified information, and was subsequently deemed guilty of spying on the Russian government. He has spent the past four years behind bars. Some critics are asking why Griner instead of Whelen. If there is a line, how did a Black lesbian basketball star who has been imprisoned just under 10 months get to skip ahead of the former active-duty reservist who generously served our country for many years?
“We never forgot about Brittney, we’ve not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years,” Biden stated in the Thursday briefing. “This was not a choice of which American to bring home.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the same message in his remarks to the press later that same day. “Despite our ceaseless efforts, the Russian government has not yet been willing to end [Whelan’s] wrongful detention,” Blinken contended. “Russia has continued to see Paul’s case through the lens of sham espionage charges, and they are treating him differently than they treated Brittney Griner.”
“We made every possible offer available to us to secure Paul’s release,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted in her Thursday briefing. “Of course, we would have preferred to see them both released… but we did not want to lose the opportunity before us to secure the release of one of them. And so that was the choice: one or none, and not which one.”
Despite Biden, Blinken, and Jean-Pierre all saying that releasing Whelan was not an option the Russians extended them and that their choice was to either free Griner or no American at all, critics swiftly began forcing an either/or choice. Opponents are also arguing the president negotiated a bad deal. Viktor Bout (who is known as the ‘Merchant of Death’) has served nearly half of a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S. for selling weapons to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Rwandan murderers. The Biden Administration swapped Bout for Griner. The not-so-subtle subtext of the critics’ responses is that Bout was too valuable of a trade to waste on a WNBA player.
Republican lawmakers are among those who are criticizing the swap. In a social media post, former President Donald Trump called the trade a “stupid and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA.” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) feels it’s a reason to impeach Biden. Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor James Carville believes these negative responses are largely about Griner’s race and sexual orientation. “Does anyone in their right mind think that if Brittney was a blonde Chi Omega from SMU that the reaction would’ve been the same,” he asked in a CNN interview. “Of course not,” Carville insisted.
In a Fox News interview, retired Marine Lt. Colonel Stuart Scheller told host Tucker Carlson, “We released an arms dealer that starts wars in places that Marines and service members respond to. And right now, we place the priority of the famous basketball player over the Marine.” Scheller and Carlson seemed unwilling to believe what the Biden Administration officials said their options were. They and others are erroneously claiming that Whelan was an option on the table, and that Griner didn’t deserve to be the choice.
Even if what White House officials are saying isn’t true (though I’m convinced they aren’t lying), some other things are absolutely irrefutable. Here’s one: more than 90% of Black women voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Hence, if there was in fact a choice to make, would it have been entirely wrong of the president to demonstrate loyalty to an often taken-for-granted group who was the most loyal to him?
Also, in another prisoner swap with Russia, the Biden Administration brought home Trevor Reed, an American citizen and Marine veteran who was detained for three years. Reed was serving a nine-year sentence for allegedly attacking a Russian police officer. Griner was sentenced to the same amount of time for being in possession of, at most, a misdemeanor quantity of cannabis oil. Reed was released and reunited with his family in the U.S. eight months ago. If there was just one choice between Griner and Whelan, why couldn’t it have been a Black woman this time? It was Reed last time.
But what about those who protected the U.S. through their military service? Shouldn’t they be higher priority than a Black woman who plays on a professional basketball team? These two questions could be met with this important one: What about Black women who bravely serve in the U.S. military, but are systematically denied opportunities for promotion; who aren’t believed when they report their experiences with sexual harassment and sexual assault; who are forced to hide or lie about their sexual orientations if they’re queer; and whose contributions are routinely overshadowed by those of their white male counterparts? Griner hasn’t served in the U.S. military, but perhaps putting her ahead of a man who has is one act of restorative justice on behalf of all those Black women servicemembers who’ve been mistreated over time.
Lastly, as I noted in another article about Griner’s release, across the globe, there was a 17% increase in the number of incarcerated women between 2010 and 2020. Here in the U.S., Black women’s representation in prisons more than twice exceeds that of white women. Undoing the systemic forces that lead to mass incarceration and the overrepresentation of imprisoned Black American women requires a robust, complex set of policy corrections that extend far beyond one president’s authority. Had he a choice, perhaps Biden would’ve decided to do the thing that he alone had the power to do right now: get one wrongly detained Black woman released from an overseas penal colony.
It's worth noting one final time that Biden and other top officials on his team maintain there was no choice to make between Griner and Whelan. But even if there was, the president certainly had several compelling justifications for bringing the Black American woman home. To argue that the Biden Administration shouldn't have accepted any deal from the Russians that didn’t include both Griner and Whelan — meaning, they should’ve terminated negotiations and walked away with no deal — strongly conveys disregard for a Black woman’s life and freedom. It says she isn’t enough. Griner is enough. Black women are enough. Fortunately, Biden refused the ‘or nothing’ option.
Jean-Pierre assured reporters that the White House will continue to pursue every option and opportunity to get Whelan freed. “The U.S. government continues to encourage the Russian government through every – every contact with them, through every channel to secure his release,” she maintained.
For all the right reasons, a wrongly imprisoned Black American lesbian was set free this time. It certainly beats the alternative, which was nothing.
