{"id":48888,"date":"2016-08-28T02:25:35","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T02:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48888"},"modified":"2016-08-28T02:25:35","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T02:25:35","slug":"meet-american-olympian-anthony-ervin-the-oldest-ever-individual-olympic-swimming-gold-medalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48888","title":{"rendered":"Meet American Olympian Anthony Ervin: The Oldest-Ever Individual Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2016\/8\/15\/meet_american_olympian_anthony_ervin_the\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Meet American Olympian Anthony Ervin: The Oldest-Ever Individual Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\" target=\"_blank\">Democracy Now!<\/a><br \/>\n2016-08-15<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/about\/staff\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Amy Goodman<\/strong><\/a>, Host and Executive Producer<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/embed\/story\/2016\/8\/15\/meet_american_olympian_anthony_ervin_the\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>While <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michael_Phelps\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Phelps<\/a> dominated the Olympic headlines over the weekend by scoring a historic 23rd gold medal, another American male swimmer has also made history in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rio_de_Janeiro\" target=\"_blank\">Rio<\/a>. Thirty-five-year-old <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anthony_Ervin\" target=\"_blank\">Anthony Ervin<\/a> became the oldest-ever individual Olympic swimming gold medalist when he won two gold medals for the men\u2019s 50-meter freestyle and the men\u2019s four-by-100-meter freestyle relay. For more, we go to Rio to speak with Ervin, who is also the author of the recent book titled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tfcbooks.org\/book\/9781617754449\" target=\"_blank\">Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian<\/a>.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN<\/strong>: This is <em>Democracy Now!<\/em>, democracynow.org, <em>The War and Peace Report<\/em>. I\u2019m Amy Goodman. We\u2019re in Rio de Janeiro\u2014at least that\u2019s where our guests are. We\u2019re joined by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jessewashington.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jesse Washington<\/a> of <em>The Undefeated<\/em>, as well as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anthony_Ervin\" target=\"_blank\">Anthony Ervin<\/a>, U.S. swimming champion and four-time Olympic medalist. At 35 years old, he\u2019s the oldest-ever individual Olympic swimming gold medalist. Just wrote the book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tfcbooks.org\/book\/9781617754449\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Anthony, welcome to <em>Democracy Now!<\/em> Congratulations on your remarkable victory. Talk about how you feel right now and what it means to you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ANTHONY ERVIN<\/strong>: Thank you for having me. I feel good. Got some lights burning right into me, and I\u2019m staring into a vacuum to talk back to you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN<\/strong>: Well, talk about how you felt when you realized\u2014when did you realize you had won, with all those toddlers in the pool, you at 35?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<strong>AMY GOODMAN<\/strong>: Anthony, you write in your beautiful book, <em>Chasing Water: Elegy of an Olympian<\/em>, about what it was like after you won in 2000\u2014you won that gold medal\u2014about being promoted as an African-American trailblazer, when you felt, at that point, as a teen, you hadn\u2019t really grown up with that black identity. Can you talk about your life in that way, who your parents are?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ANTHONY ERVIN<\/strong>: Sure. You know, my mom, she came from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_York_City\" target=\"_blank\">New York City<\/a>. She\u2019s a city gal. You know, she even keeps her own\u2014her personal history is a mystery, even to me and the rest of us kids. And my dad came from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/West_Virginia\" target=\"_blank\">West Virginia<\/a>. You know, his father was a coal miner. And, you know, he was\u2014I mean, the question of blackness, you know, is a question of authenticity. And to be viewed in that way\u2014and swimming is\u2014it\u2019s a very visual sport. It\u2019s a body. You know, literally, you\u2019re a body in the water, wearing close to nothing, so that body is on display. And if we\u2019re talking about blackness, blackness is a color. You know, it\u2019s\u2014in the eyes of many, it\u2019s a skin tone. You know, but then, if you dig into the history of it, there\u2019s the idea of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=86\" target=\"_blank\">hypodescent<\/a>. You know, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">one drop of blood makes you black<\/a>. So, it\u2019s all very complicated, and I didn\u2019t know about any of this. I wasn\u2019t educated on the history of this. Or if I was, I was snoozing through it in classrooms. So, I didn\u2019t know how to necessarily answer to it. And I had trouble tackling, trying to argue that, you know, I authentically am this, if others say I\u2019m not, or people trying to posit some kind of identity on me which I did not drape on myself. I mean, it\u2019s a question of being able to pursue my personal freedom and needing to shuck all forms of identity in order to do that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN<\/strong>: Your father is African-American, Native American?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the transcript <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2016\/8\/15\/meet_american_olympian_anthony_ervin_the\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meet American Olympian Anthony Ervin: The Oldest-Ever Individual Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist Democracy Now! 2016-08-15 Amy Goodman, Host and Executive Producer While Michael Phelps dominated the Olympic headlines over the weekend by scoring a historic 23rd gold medal, another American male swimmer has also made history in Rio. Thirty-five-year-old Anthony Ervin became the oldest-ever individual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,13743,8,20,842],"tags":[20277,24892,20275,7222,18231],"class_list":["post-48888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-videos","tag-amy-goodman","tag-anthony-ervin","tag-democracy-now","tag-sports","tag-swimming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48889,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48888\/revisions\/48889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}