The current 800m Olympic champion is Athing Mu, a woman of South-Sudanese descent. If Semenya were still running, it is likely a dark-skinned African woman would have been deprived of her deserved accolades and financial benefits, as happened to a generation of runners. This has nothing to do with race. The indoor 800m champion is a Black woman, Ajee Wilson. The Olympics bronze medalist is a Black woman, Raevyn Rogers who would have finished off the podium.
Mboma, a DSD athlete who moved down to the 200m at the Olympics, won silver, beating a Black woman, Gabby Thomas. Shelley-Ann Fraser-Price, a Black woman, finished 4th. Two African woman were the next two qualifiers kept out of the finals by Mboma and Masilingi, another DSD athlete.
An African woman just came third in the steeple, beaten by a suspected DSD athlete, Getachew. Virtually every woman who is deprived of placement, medals, and finals are African and Black females, not “feminine white European women.” All of these Black and African women with various bodies, shades, musculature etc. are well within the testosterone limits as they are all natal women.
It is an extremely racist argument that African and Black women are naturally masculine and in fact are actually men. This narrative reaches back into enslavement, where Black women were deemed as manly beasts, able to work long hours in the fields as they were not real women like white women. The removal of Black women’s children in slavery was justified because unlike white women, black women do not have natural maternal feelings. The rape of black women was justified because black women are not real women but exotic hypersexual beasts. These narratives persist today in ideas that black women are unfit mothers, leading to our children being taken by child welfare; that black girls “look grown” meaning they can’t be raped; that black women are angry, emasculating, can’t get a man because of our attitude, are to blame for crime committed by our children, etc. There is a long, deeply dehumanizing history and contemporary reality of removing black women from womanhood. Black women from Serena Williams to Michelle Obama are accused of being men.
Anyone who argues that African women are actually men unlike feminine white European women who are actual women is contributing to the violence against clack women across the globe.
The DSD Semenya has is prominent in some areas as it shows up due to consanguinity. It is also prominent in areas of Pakistan, Palestine, Turkey, India, and other areas not in Sub-Saharan Africa. The reason why it is African athletes currently is because, taking advantage of the lack of medical care and records in remote rural regions, exploitative Federations and countries have decided to game the system by deliberately scouting and presenting these athletes in female competition for money. They have incentive to do this as currently they can get away with it. In contrast, when Dutee Chand sued, she also sued the Indian Federation as they, also having high rates of these athletes, remove them from national and international competition. The lack of action on Semenya, and the continued loopholes of allowing DSD athletes in other events has encouraged these athletes to be exploited, humiliated on a world stage as people speculate, and is completely unkind to them as well.
There are cases before the 1960s of European athletes being identified and removed; with modern medicine, however, it is basically impossible for someone not to be diagnosed if not in infancy, at least by puberty when the child goes through typical male puberty, does not menstruate or develop breasts, etc. Race and origin has nothing to do with why African athletes are at the centre of this. It is not about beauty standards, femininity or “jealous white women who can’t win” - East African athletes have dominated distance events for decades now, and West African descended athletes dominate the sprints. If this were about jealous white women losing, targeting rare DSD athletes instead of the hundreds of Black female athletes ruling podiums and records would be a silly strategy.
Many Sub-Saharan African countries are now cracking down as seen by the removal of these athletes from the All-Africa football cup, an event that literally has nothing to do with white Europeans.