Caitlin Clark’s dazzling ascent as the face of women’s basketball has reaped a whirlwind of racial controversy.
“I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and White, but to me, it is,” said Las Vegas Aces superstar center A’ja Wilson about Clark’s celebrated rise. “[Y]ou can be top notch at what you are as a Black woman, but … [t]hey don’t see it as marketable.” Thus, hard working Black women are “swept underneath the rug.” Wilson says when people deny that Clark’s stature is driven by race “it boils my blood.”
Caitlin Clark’s epic emergence is surely in part about race, about gender, and about the myth of meritocracy that undergirds sports. It has also revealed how some celebrated Black male athletes and analysts are tone deaf to the plight of their distaff number.
Caitlin Clark is undoubtedly a phenomenal basketball player. She has shattered collegiate scoring and assist records on her way to being recognized as one of the greatest female shooters to ever swish the nets. Her present reign as the queen of women’s basketball has generated unprecedented interest in the game. College and professional attendance and viewing records have been set as millions throng to an arena or the television set to watch Clark “cook.”
“Sports media and sponsors tell us who is valuable, and you have told the world that I mattered today, and everyone who voted, thank you. But I think we should use this power together to also celebrate Black women.” — Paige Bueckers
Clark’s brief sojourn in the WNBA has more sharply focused the contradictions at play. A troubling narrative has taken shape: Other players, mostly Black women, are supposedly jealous of Caitlin’s success. They allegedly chafe at her stardom, envy her talent, resent her privilege, despise her popularity. By giving her hard fouls, tough talk on and off the court, and sending subliminal shots on social media, Black women are being portrayed as a grievous gaggle of mean girls.
The sub rosa racial tropes surface on Caitlin’s body as she is increasingly portrayed as the victim of unsportsmanlike conduct and a heroic White martyr enduring unjust Black female assault. She is recast as a fragile White girl in need of protection from taller, tougher, more treacherous women in a league that is 70 percent Black.
This narrative ignores how rookies of all races endure initiation into the WNBA through roughhouse treatment. Black stars like A’ja Wilson and Aaliyah Boston were routinely hammered in their rookie campaigns in the league. (Just last night Wilson was bloodied after getting hit hard and knocked to the ground while driving to the hoop). And star Kelsey Plum as a rookie was literally elbowed in the gut by legendary hooper Diana Taurasi without as much as a mumble.
Clark is surely not the first player to be targeted for non-basketball aggression. Clark is treated to the same tough action as nearly all other stars who are touted as generational talents. The outrage over her manhandling rests upon a mistaken presumption that she is in a league of her own.
Even in college Clark got the benefit of a racial calculus that tarnished Black players for the very actions for which she was lauded. When highly regarded WNBA rookie Angel Reese was locked in battle with Clark as a college player in the 2023 NCAA women’s championship game, Reese moved her hand back and forth over her face in a “you can’t see me” gesture made famous by WWE wrestler Jon Cena. Journalist Jesus Ortiz termed Reese’s gesture “classless” and former ESPN journalist Keith Olbermann deemed her an “idiot.” Yet when Clark made the same gesture to an opponent earlier in the tournament she was viewed as hyper competitive.
Praise and “paper”
It is not simply on the court that the racial difference flashes and challenges the notion of reward based merely on merit. Clark has shrewdly translated her cultural capital into a nearly $30 million shoe deal with Nike and a prestigious endorsement deal with Wilson Sporting Goods Co., the league’s official basketball supplier, in an arrangement matched previously only by Michael Jordan.
A’ja Wilson, by comparison, was a NCAA champion, Naismith College Player of the Year, WNBA Rookie of the Year, a two-time WNBA champion, was twice named the league’s Most Valuable Player, and is an Olympic Gold Medalist, all before she was 27. She is bright, charismatic, beautiful, a New York Times bestselling author.
Still, it was only after Caitlin Clark, who has won no “chips” or individual WNBA accolades, got her signature shoe deal that Wilson got one with Nike, with a lot less fanfare and financial upswing. Before Wilson and Clark, the only other women with shoe deals now playing in the NBA were Elena Delle Donne, Sabrina Ionescu, and Breanna Stewart, all White players.
“You can’t be the big, bad wolf but then cry like Courage the Cowardly Dog.” — sports analyst Emmanuel Acho
Many critics have suggested that a rising Clark tide lifts all Black player boats, but that is highly unlikely. Despite their athletic prowess, their interesting personalities, their high intelligence or social conscience, many Black female players don’t track well with the White public and have not been viewed as marketable.
Heterosexual White women make far more in marketing and sponsorship dollars, and media attention, than Black women and other women of color. “I was getting preferential treatment because I was straight and White,” says Kelsey Plum, admitting that despite limited playing time with sparse scoring, she still appeared on graphics promoting the team early in her career. “It’s absolutely a problem in our league.”
Black lesbian player Jonquel Jones, a former league MVP, agrees that in women’s basketball “you gotta be the best player, best looking, most marketable, most IG followers, just to sit at the endorsement table.” Looks and marketability are still closely keyed to ideal forms of straight whiteness. That holds for NIL (name, image, likeness) deals in women’s college basketball, where even though Black women fare a bit better today, blonde ballers are still overwhelmingly favored. And the recent assault on diversity, equity and inclusion in corporate America assures that Black women will continue to lag far behind in marketing payoffs.
This may help explain why Black female basketball stars are miffed, frustrated, even resentful of the praise and “paper” heaped on Caitlin Clark, an undeniably marvelously gifted player, while women far more accomplished in the professional ranks (the recently retired Candace Parker was the only player named the league’s MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same year) have been overlooked and on the receiving end of a bad pass.
Black men exacerbate the problem
Their relative invisibility and perceived unmarketability, through no fault of their own, are exacerbated when mostly Black women players are publicly scolded by a basketball legend like Charles Barkley who tells them to “stop being petty” and to be grateful for Clark bringing charter flights for players to the WNBA, which is true, and for bringing money and visibility to the game, which, of course, escapes the hands of most Black players.
Barkley was backing up LeBron James, who said that because of Clark “a lot of great things will happen for the WNBA.” He is right, but he uncharacteristically neglects to offer insight into the gross unfairness of other deserving players failing to get their just due. As LeBron declared in 2020, in a courtside interview after winning his most recent NBA championship with the Lakers during the pandemic in the NBA “bubble,” that the Lakers GM, coach, organization and fan base wanted its respect — “And I want my damn respect too.” It is certain that the unjustly ignored and unfairly overlooked Black female players want their respect too.
In women’s basketball “you gottah be the best player, best looking, most marketable, most IG followers, just to sit at the endorsement table.” — Jonquel Jones
Barkley and James are not the only Black men who appear tone deaf to the nuances and context of Black female play. Former professional athlete and sports commentator Emmanuel Acho offered what he termed a “gender neutral, racially indifferent take” to Angel Reese’s emotional college press conference where she confessed that she had “been attacked so many times, [had] death threats…[been] sexualized.” (Not to mention the countless racist attacks on social media.)
Referring to her colorful personality and her robust self-confidence, Acho claimed that, “You can’t be the big, bad wolf but then cry like Courage the Cowardly Dog.” He could only make such a remark while deliberately ignoring the racist and sexist assault on Reese, aspiring to a neutrality that he failed to observe when recently proclaiming that “the envy of Caitlin Clark is undeniable. Let’s not gaslight fans and tell them it doesn’t exist.”
It would be helpful if these Black men had the poise and wisdom of UConn Huskies superstar Paige Bueckers. (Clark could benefit from such insight too, especially since she defaulted to White denial, supported by the myth of pure merit, while contesting how race has shaped her fortune, stating that “there’s opportunities for every single player in women’s basketball.”) As a 19-year-old college student and recipient of the 2021 ESPY award as best college athlete in women’s sports, Bueckers paid homage to Black women.
“With the light that I have now as a White woman who leads a Black-led sport and celebrated here, I want to shed a light on Black women,” Bueckers bravely stated in her acceptance speech. “They don’t get the media coverage that they deserve. They’ve given so much to the sport, the community and society as a whole and their value is undeniable.” Bueckers said that 80 percent of the post-season awards in the WNBA were snagged by Black players, and yet they got half the media coverage of White athletes.
“I think it’s time for change. Sports media hold the key to storylines. Sports media and sponsors tell us who is valuable, and you have told the world that I mattered today, and everyone who voted, thank you. But I think we should use this power together to also celebrate Black women.”
Bueckers’s words are perhaps even truer today than when she uttered them three years ago. It is up to all of us to make sure that, unlike the Black women they celebrated, her words don’t get lost in our refusal to acknowledge their truth.
Michael Eric Dyson is a renowned professor, now at Vanderbilt University; an author of 25 books, including seven New York Times bestsellers; and a public intellectual who has won several awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal, American Book Award and 2 NAACP Image Awards.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated where Paige Bueckers plays basketball. It is University of Connecticut.
