Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn't Built for Us

by Alison Mariella Désir

But my hold on my mental health was tenuous. My father’s dementia had progressed and left him with delusions and the inability to control bodily functions. He needed someone nearby all the time, a responsibility that fell to my mom and me. A couple of times a week, she dropped him off at my apartment on her way to teach at a college north of the city. I would feed him, get him to the toilet, change a diaper if needed, help him get on and off the bed. She was usually back by five thirty so I could be in the city by seven. One Wednesday when she wasn’t back by six fifteen, I broke down, crying hysterically, believing that if I missed one run, everything would fall apart.

The group met at Carl Schurz Park on the East River, where the mayor’s house was. As we approached, a large group of white people at the tops of the steps on the promenade were jumping up and down and shouting. I immediately looked around, taking in the scene. It was barely light and these people were yelling within steps of the mayor’s house? We couldn’t do this. Imagine the attention fifty or sixty Black people would garner if we were on the lawn near the mayor’s house, screaming “Fuck yeah.” I imagined a passerby wondering what the “hoodlums” were up to and calling the police. But this group seemed not to be worried at all, not the slightest bit. This is what it’s like, I thought, to be white and move freely in the world.

Once I saw the underlying problem of society’s white supremacist culture, more running and thinking showed me that I was still fighting the white supremacy in myself. My own ideas on perfectionism stemmed from the internalized belief that “perfect” was possible and something we should all strive for. The need to show and prove myself through my education was a product of believing my worth rested in my degrees, my productivity; as well as the notion that as a Black woman, I had to be twice as good as my peers to be accepted.

I felt proud that our four leaders were Black women. Black women don’t come to mind when people think of ultrarunning or epic running events and yet here we were, taking up space that was largely the domain of white men. It felt radical, resistive, disruptive.

Two days later, runners across the country took to the streets to run 2.23 miles for Ahmaud, the distance a remembrance of the day he was killed: February 23. In Georgia, the McMichaels had finally been arrested, almost ten weeks after the murder. It was May 8, on what should have been Ahmaud’s twenty-sixth birthday. It wasn’t until the evening that Amir and I finally got out to do our 2.23 miles. All day I kept telling myself I would do it, but something in me didn’t want to. I was conflicted about honoring his life by running the miles associated with his death. I worried that the complexity of a human being could not be distilled into a day, that running a distance that marked his murder erased the life that he’d lived. Were we honoring Ahmaud? Or was this for us? Amir and I put the baby in the stroller and headed out. We ran down 132nd to Randall’s Island Park, did a small loop, and finished as a family. As always, I gained a sense of clarity that comes after a run. We were running for Ahmaud because that was his place of joy, something we as Black people all deserve to feel while moving through space.

The presence of a few Black people can make a space seem diverse to white people. But for Black people, the white space is unchanged, and the rules of engagement are intact. Our survival depends on our ability to make sense of racialized expectations for us in every environment we enter. We know that anything can happen at any time: at a moment’s notice, you can go from experiencing a runner’s high to being hunted down, and there will be no recourse. So where do you run to avoid the risks? How much do you limit yourself? Do you choose safety, or do you choose exploration? If you choose exploration, what will the consequences be?

White supremacy is the system that allows racism to flourish, and prevents racial diversity from being welcomed and celebrated. I often think of this quote from the hip-hop artist Guante: “White supremacy is not a shark, it is the water.”

“But terms like white supremacy and systemic racism are not ‘joining’ language,” the white people argued. “They will turn people off and no one will join the coalition.” I spoke up: “Why would we prioritize white people’s comfort over Black people’s reality?”

The image of the “white L” and the “Black butterfly” is a clear representation of what’s necessary to run. A runner is somebody with secure housing, a safe place to train, running infrastructure—parks, paths, trails, well-kept sidewalks—clean air, and the physical, emotional, and psychological safety to run. And the majority of people with those privileges are white, just as it was during the running boom. Said simply: your zip code determines not only your health, longevity, safety, and comfort, it also determines who has the freedom to easily run.

But he also wasn’t sure what he believed. He wanted to be open, and yet he was hesitant to let go of the story he thought he knew. The stories we think we know bring comfort; they add order and clarity to our experiences. It’s hard to let go of that. Learning and unlearning our history is a necessary part of decentering whiteness and widening the circle of inclusion. History is living and breathing in the present. It does not just explain the past, it sets the future. “What we choose to remember, memorialize, and preserve as a society determines how we understand our present and imagine our future,” wrote the curators of an exhibit on the murder of Emmett Till