At the 1968 Olympics, Foreman’s flag-waving was seen as deference if not betrayal. But the reaction to it reveals the limited ways we allow Black athletes to express themselves
When a teenager from Texas named George Foreman waved a tiny American flag in the boxing ring after winning Olympic gold in 1968, he had little awareness of the political minefield beneath his size 15 feet. The moment, captured by television cameras for an audience of millions during one of the most volatile periods in American history, was instantly contrasted with another image from two days earlier at the same Mexico City Games: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, heads bowed and black-gloved fists raised in salute during the US national anthem, a silent act of protest that would become one of the defining visuals of the 20th century. Their message was unmistakable: a rebuke of the country that had sent them to compete while continuing to deny civil rights to people who looked like them. Their action was seen as defiant resistance, Foreman’s as deference to the very systems of oppression they were protesting.
Foreman’s flag-waving, unremarkable in almost any other context, became a lightning rod. For many, especially those aligned with the rising tide of Black Power, the gesture felt tone-deaf at best, an outright betrayal at worst. How could a young Black man, representing a country still brutalizing his own people, celebrate it so enthusiastically? But that reading, while emotionally understandable amid the fevered upheaval of 1968, misses something deeper – about Foreman, about patriotism, and about the burden of symbolic politics laid on the shoulders of Black athletes.
