Park City • There are towns in her home state in which Kehri Jones has been told not to stop in. Not for any reason. Drive on has been advice when passing through various cities in Texas.
Now, four months out from the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, Jones doesn’t mention any inkling of fear of potentially heading to South Korea as leaders of the U.S. and North Korea continue to trade barbs.
Yet a warning remains in the state of her birth, where she was raised and became a star track-and-field athlete at Baylor, a state that set her down a path to becoming a world champion bobsledder.
If Jones, a self-described spunky 5-foot-1 athlete, had to choose, she wouldn’t be seated behind a table in a ritzy resort town in Utah, describing in detail personal, disturbing, unfair moments that have shook her to her very core.
That’s why the Stars and Stripes, the national anthem and representing her country as of late have been more complicated than they need to be for Kehri Jones, the daughter of a U.S. Army reserve master sergeant and American Olympic hopeful.
“I feel very strongly about it,” she said. “I’m directly affected because of my race, not because I want to be. I think that that’s sad.”
A day after NFL athletes nationwide knelt or locked arms or stayed inside locker rooms during the playing of the national anthem, the former Baylor Bears sprinter voiced that yes, the social and racial injustices in the United States need not only to be fixed, but addressed in the open. Black female bobsled athletes aren’t “very big-time athletes,” Jones said. “We don’t get a lot of press.”
Yet tugging at her heart is tightrope walk, a delicate balance of wanting to represent proudly the United States but also being transparent so more people realize the disparity many minorities deal with on a daily basis.
“I do want to bring attention to what’s going on that’s not OK,” she said. “It’s kind of a Catch-22. We want to represent our country well in front of everybody else, but while we’re at home, we want things to go better.”
Jones recently was in an airport in Texas — she declined to name which city — but said after accidentally rolling over a man’s foot with her luggage, he turned to her and responded, “Watch it, [racial slur]!” In the madness of an airport, she was just trying to figure out which way to go.
“We’re not supposed to have stuff like that going on, but it’s still going on,” she said. “It hurts that people view us that way, even though I’m well-educated, I’m not a mean person, I don’t do drugs, I don’t do the stereotypical stuff that they say we do, and I still get a rap for it.”
Hearing the “Star-Spangled Banner” while standing at the base of a frozen track somewhere in the world is the apex for Jones. It is, she said, “the greatest thing to hear,” because the anthem typically signifies success, a job well done, a goal accomplished, and in the case of Jones and her partner Elana Meyers Taylor, a race won.
“If we can make the world a better place,” Meyers Taylor said, “we’re going to do it.”
Jones was born in Fort Hood, Texas. Her father, Kerry, is a master sergeant. In a few weeks, he’ll be deployed overseas to Romania for at least nine months. She grew up in Killeen, Texas, where Fort Hood is located. After President Donald Trump tweeted that athletes who kneel during the anthem should be fired or after the scenes of a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Va., the issues are clear, Jones said.
“It’s still a problem,” she said. “I think it’s become more noticeable now that people have made it OK that this is going on and people are not being punished for their actions. I just think it’s a bad situation.”
Still, Jones finds herself defending her country and Trump when the U.S. is competing abroad. She concedes that the U.S. is viewed more negatively since he entered office but said she gladly would welcome any member of the Trump cabinet to attend the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang in February.
Nothing is set in stone for Jones, who along with Meyers Taylor won gold at this year’s women’s bobsled World Championships in Koenigssee, Germany. But for as long as she has the stage, Jones said she won’t hesitate to use it for the betterment of a country she feels needs to change.
“At the end of the day, after all this is said and done, I’m still just going to be another person in the United States that has to deal with everything that’s going on,” she said. “And if I don’t use my platform for something bigger, than I’m not using it properly.”
Aja Evans grew up on the south side of Chicago. The 2014 Olympic bronze medalist bobsledder recently spoke to a group of teens at an event in Chicago’s Grant Park.
“Just coming from my city, you deal with a lot of violence and as of lately it’s been a lot of police brutality and certain problems like that, so it makes it tough because with social media, everyone’s an activist now or everyone’s an expert and so it’s hard to kind of find the quality within it,” Evans said. “I’m not really big on just doing stuff for social media, so like being an influence and talking to these kids is a big passion of mine.”
Evans has trained over the last few summers with current and former NFL players, including her brother, former defensive tackle, Fred Evans, Devin Hester and Matt Forte.
“I think we all have our different opinions about the head of the country and all the drama and stuff going on right now,” she said, “but I think I commend those guys for being able to be that strong and go before the whole world in something they believe in.”
Jones is crossing her fingers that if she qualifies for the Olympic team and heads to South Korea, she can do so with her dad in attendance. It’s still up in the air if he’d be able to make the trip.
Asked if she ever discussed the protests with her father and their perceived slight against American servicemen and women, Jones paused.
“I’ve never been anything but a black woman all my life,” she said. “What they’re kneeling for is my demographic. With my dad being in the military and me representing the United States, it is a fine line, but my dad doesn’t find it disrespectful to the military because there are men and women of color in the military who are still having the problems as the civilians are having.”