"Two disaffected black athletes from the United States put on a public display of petulance that sparked one of the most unpleasant controversies in Olympics history and turned the high drama of the games into theatre of the absurd."

That is how the Time Magazine chose to describe the now iconic scene of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising black-gloved fists high while standing atop the medal pedestal and refusing to look at the American flag.

The year, of course, was 1968. Months earlier, Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated, and major riots took place that year and in the years prior.

Nascent Civil Rights legislation was still entering into effect, and in many parts of the country, Jim Crow and segregationist laws continued to exist either on the books or in practice.

Is history repeating itself?

But Smith and Carlos were denounced. Ultimately, they were expelled from the games. How dare they, as an International Olympics Committee spokesperson put it then , "breach the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit"? How dare they?

History vindicated Smith and Carlos. Today, as we have vibrant movements in the US demanding that black lives must matter, it is easier to see why the outrage directed by the American mainstream towards Smith and Carlos for their protest then should have been directed towards the heinous racism and institutional discrimination upon which their country was built and continues to suffer from instead.

It was easier of course to ridicule the pair, call them petulant, militant and whatever else than to think about their protest and our society's complicity in their grievances.

How realistic is it to expect a global event to be entirely detached from global politics? What is this 'Olympic spirit' that exists in a vacuum where the hearts and minds of humans and their connections to the political world suddenly go blank?

I've thought about this episode much over the last several days as the Olympics in Brazil take place. Much attention was paid to two incidents between Arab and Israeli athletes.

In one, a Lebanese group of athletes refused to share a bus with Israeli athletes, and in another, an Egyptian judoka refused to shake hands with his Israeli competitor after a bout.

In the Western media, the Arabs were ridiculed for their stances. This was supposedly childish behaviour and did not fit with the spirit of sportsmanship.

There was little discussion about the roots of the grievances or interpretations of the events as political acts. One particularly odious commentator used the episodes to diagnose the "Arab mind" as diseased.

It's always political

How realistic is it to expect a global event to be entirely detached from global politics? What is this "Olympic spirit" that exists in a vacuum where the hearts and minds of humans and their connections to the political world suddenly go blank?