Josh Dixon: Visibility Matters
BIO: Josh Dixon is a former Division 1 (Stanford) and Team USA gymnast. The seven-time All-American is currently an entrepreneur and a co-owner of the Chicago Red Stars of the NWSL. Josh speaks out on issues of
racial and gender-equity, LGBTQ inclusion, and scholastic opportunity to students and student-athletes. He offers consulting services at joshdixon.co
WHEN DID YOU FIRST RECOGNIZE THE POWER OF YOUR VOICE?
I recognized my voice late in my collegiate career. I was, frankly, raised in a very privileged environment. My parents were not trillionaires by any means, but we did not want for anything. I don’t know how it feels to be a socio-economically disenfranchised Black male - I know it exists, but my experience does not lend a credible voice to the challenges of those who have been directly impacted.. Part of my hesitation around using my voice while in school was a concern that I couldn’t authentically and personally speak to inequities that I know exist in the Black community, the Asian community, or the gay community. I represent all of those designations but the challenges, for the most part, weren’t my lived experiences.
I am adopted and, by sheer coincidence, my birth mother and biological mother are both full Japanese. I identify more with Japanese culture and heritage as my grandparents were interned after Pearl Harbor during World War II. They were taken from their home and forcibly relocated to an Internment Camp. Through my grandparents, I have learned a tremendous amount about the suffering and struggle they experienced and the rationale behind the reparations demands of the Japanese community.
Having the opportunity to compete with the collegiate program at Stanford was a transformative time in my life and an exceptional experience. For athletes in the LGBTQ space, there’s such a stigma or a knee jerk reaction or the fear, ‘I'm gay in this sport. How am I going to be perceived?’ That was a headspace that I was in for a portion of college. Once I had that conversation with myself and owned it, it opened a whole different level of performance that would have not been unlocked if I hadn’t accepted and shared who I was as a gay athlete.
One day one of my teammates said, ‘Hey, Josh. You coming out publicly or talking about being an athlete who is gay, it’s actually not about you - it’s far bigger.’ His point was the attention I was getting was for those who either didn’t have the opportunity to compete and be out, like I did, or who were tackling what I had just gone through and struggling to own their existence and authentic self. That made it easier for me, because my motivation was not about getting a headline for Josh Dixon - it was for other collegiate athletes who I knew were in an NCAA program working through their own introspection of their sexual identity. I know what that process did for my craft and for my gymnastics. By not being a voice, I was robbing others of the knowledge that they were not alone. I knew that someone was not going to have that conversation with themselves which could open greater potential for their gymnastics career. I found my voice through that platform, later than I would have liked, in college.
HOW DO YOU USE THE POWER OF YOUR VOICE?
It's still evolving, but I mainly focus on opportunity and inclusion. A lot of that stems from the opportunities I've been given. I come from a very diverse family. My two older sisters and I were all adopted. We were taught and shown how to work and how to outwork, literally, everyone. If not for our parents, a lot of what we do on a daily basis would not exist.
Seeing that young black kids in gymnastics don't exist – Oh my God! At one point, I was the only person of color on the national team. I think there were 12 guys at the time. It was the same with the Stanford program. Gymnastics, in general, is a privatized, fairly affluent sport from the get-go which limits opportunity to a lot of people.
I would not have been able to dream as big if I didn't see Jair Lynch win an Olympic medal. If I didn’t see Chris Young as one of the few Black athletes in the late ‘90s or early 2000s on the US Men's National Team, I wouldn't know that opportunity could exist. It’s almost cliché to say representation matters, but for people who look like me or identify like me, yes, it does! Toward the end of my career I started owning that.
I check lots of boxes for underrepresented communities, whether you're Asian, whether you're Black, whether you're gay. Here I am, doing my thing, having very public failures and successes. If I'm delivering any amount of inspiration for someone who identifies into any one of those categories - great! At this point, my purpose was about much more than what I was delivering on the competition floor.
I’m also very passionate about gender inequity. My first foray into that was in politics. I went to work for a current female senator and was like, ‘Holy Crap!’ There are no women in politics. There are no women on school boards, in local communities and congressional districts or in state legislatures. Women are getting the shaft left, right and center.
As a team owner of the Chicago Red Stars, I gained an understanding of the inequities currently in play in women's sports versus their male counterparts. If we're just looking at the performance side of it, it should be skewed the other way, specifically with soccer. Now that I'm not seeing it through a competitive athlete lens, I see the issue from a holistic approach, and that has opened my eyes to the business side of it. Having been in these inequity positions in a different arena and landscape, why not try to right those injustices? Sports is such a galvanizing community, anyway, so being a part of that change is exciting.
WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR OTHER ATHLETES LOOKING TO USE THE POWER OF THEIR VOICES TO MAKE AN IMPACT?
Athletes are so focused on their craft that oftentimes they lose perspective as to everything that's going on around them, even at the highest levels. It’s kind of a Catch-22. If you want to be really good at something, you have to put on blinders to an extent. But as you're finding your voice and venturing outside of a world that's comfortable for you, a world of training or competition or physical and mental suffering that you almost embrace because you know it's going to facilitate your trajectory in sport, if you can step outside of that and ask as many questions as possible, you will gain perspective on your sport while you're still competing. That will allow you to find what you’re really passionate about like tackling gun violence or homelessness or music education. It gives you that balance so that, now, when you're back in your sport, you're maximizing your time in it rather than just living it 24-7.
I think athletes now have an easier time being that role model or that impactful figure on issues of importance because of the connectivity of social media and technology. They have a harder time managing the ‘why’ of it, because athletes often feel that responsibility is placed on them. They’re often expected to be cognizant of a community they may represent rather than finding meaning on their own and embracing it with a different level of ownership.
What I bring to athletes who are currently in the system is a perspective from being in those shoes. I get every component of it. My hindsight is 2020, so use that hindsight to your advantage. It's a great way that helps some of the people understand how they want to find their voice while they're still training and competing. Let me help you on that or let me be a sounding board for your own mental clarity and thus your voice.
WHAT DOES ATHLETES’ VOICES MEAN TO YOU?
Athletes’ Voices means understanding your voice, understanding your platform, and understanding how to effect change. For me, it's an exercise of continual introspection. Being relatively new to a non-competitive athletic existence and understanding, what was my experience? What was really important and transformative during my competitive years? How can I speak to that in a way that will help one or thousands of kids going through the same system?
I'm still continually finding what my voice is by recognizing what it was during different parts of my 30 years on planet Earth. Even though I had to work very hard at certain things, I recognize that was an extreme opportunity that I'm very thankful to have had. I’m grateful to be able to participate, because there are a lot of spectators. The ability to participate is an honor and a responsibility at the same time, and I’m still finding ways to hone the impact of that responsibility.
