White Player Brings Diversity to the WNBA, Yet Diversity Advocates Express Discontent

Here’s a little baseball trivia for you on a spring Tuesday. Kirby Higbe was a starting pitcher in the majors in the 1940s. He was also an opponent of integration — which is why, when Jackie Robinson (the first black ballplayer in the modern era) was about to join the Brooklyn Dodgers, Higbe demanded a trade, and he got one. He ended up on the Pirates. But Higbe couldn’t avoid Robinson for very long. On July 15, 1948, Higbe pitched a game against Robinson and the Dodgers. Maybe coincidentally — but probably not — Higbe hit one batter that game: Jackie Robinson. And it turned out to be a costly move, in the context of the game; Robinson went on to advance to third base, then steal home plate, helping the Dodgers beat the Pirates, 7 to 6.

For Jackie Robinson, these kinds of cheap shots were common. He was often harassed on and off the field because of his skin color. That was the price of integrating sports in the 1940s, as the history books have taught us. It’s conventional wisdom at this point.

What’s not conventional wisdom, even though it should be, is that racial resentment can still be found in professional sports. It just goes in the opposite direction. And nowhere is that more evident than the league that, until recently, no one ever talked about, much less watched: the WNBA.

By now you’ve probably seen the footage of Caitlin Clark, the former Iowa Hawkeyes player and now rookie on a team that we all just learned existed, called the Indiana Fever. In the footage Clark, who’s widely regarded as one of the greatest female athletes of all time, is assaulted on the court during a game on Saturday. She was hip-checked to the ground during the third quarter by Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter.

There was no reason whatsoever for Carter to shove Clark’s hip and knock her over; the ball hadn’t even been inbounded yet. Watch:

The game “had a lot of people talking,” says the Good Morning America anchorwoman. “There’s no love lost between these two teams,” says the reporter. “They’re giving fans a show.”

That’s a very sing-songy way to describe an unprovoked shove to the floor. It’s especially odd considering the fact that, after she knocked Clark over, Chennedy Carter appeared to mouth a five-letter epithet that begins with the letter “b.”

The WNBA player who appeared to call Caitlin Clark a “b*tch” and hammered her with a cheap shot is now liking tweets about how it was justified and she should do it again.

Chennedy Carter has zero remorse. These women simply hate Clark. pic.twitter.com/Bbs6oW912v

— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) June 1, 2024

And later, as David Hookstead noted at Outkick, Carter then went on social media to “like” the following tweets:

Chennedy get her one mo time for me!

That was a crazy ass flop.

LET  EM KNOW HOLLYWOOD

Put Caitlin lil ass in the basket.

Now, of course, “liking” tweets doesn’t necessarily mean that Chennedy Carter endorses them. But it certainly appears that she does endorse those sentiments, based on all the information we have — including the fact that Carter eventually told reporters she has absolutely no regrets about what happened, even though any reasonable person would have a lot of regrets about what happened, if it had been an accident. Watch:

It’s impossible not to conclude that Chennedy Carter harbors a lot of disdain for Caitlin Clark. And there are a couple possible explanations why. One explanation — the one that has nothing to do with racism, and which a lot of media outlets are running with — is that Carter is simply jealous that a rookie like Clark has managed to do the impossible, which is to make the WNBA a topic of discussion.

There’s no doubt that Clark has indeed accomplished that. In just five games, the Indiana Fever — with Caitlin Clark on the team — have already exceeded their total attendance from all 20 home games last season combined. The same is not remotely true for the Chicago Sky, or for any other team in the league. And that appears to bother the players on the Chicago Sky quite a bit. They seem to be in intense denial about it.

Here’s one of Chennedy Carter’s teammates, Angel Reese. Reese also happens to have something of a history with Carter, dating back to their college years. Here’s Reese’s assessment of why Clark is so popular:

Reese says, “The reason why we’re watching women’s basketball is not just because of one person. It’s because of me, too. I want y’all to realize that.”

That’s obviously not true. In fact it’s extremely easy to prove that it’s false. As someone pointed out online, when the Chicago Sky hosted the Los Angeles Sparks, total attendance was around 8,000. But when the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark hosted that same team — the Los Angeles Sparks — attendance was over 16,000. This is what they call a “controlled experiment” in the business. Fans are lining up to see Caitlin Clark. Even when they move her team to larger arenas, they sell out. And even during away games, kids are lining up for photographs with her. Watch:

Watching all this, it’s obvious that some jealousy is at play. A league full of terrible basketball players with no moral character will naturally become deeply uncomfortable when a good player finally arrives.

But it doesn’t take a lot of digging to realize that something else is going on here — something that’s elevating that jealousy into on-court violence.

The truth is that Clark has been the subject of intense scrutiny because of her race even before she was drafted. And that’s now spilling out into the open, both on the court and off the court.

Take Angel Reese, for example. During last year’s NCAA championship game, Reese made a taunting hand gesture right in Caitlin Clark’s face. It was a callback to when Clark had made a similar gesture earlier in the tournament. But Reese claimed she received more criticism — not because of how she had performed the gesture, or the context of it, but because she’s black.

I’m too ghetto,” Reese said. “I don’t fit in a box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. … So this was for the girls that look like me, that’s going to speak up on what they believe in.

This is the racial dimension that has underscored criticism of Caitlin Clark for a long time, and continues to do so. There are almost too many examples to count, but I’ll start with what former WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes said about Clark just a few months ago on a podcast, while wearing a shirt that read “Female, Fearless, and Black.”

As OutKick reported on the podcast:

Swoopes tried to undermine Clark’s legacy with a series of inaccuracies and lies. She claimed we must take Clark’s record-breaking career with a grain of salt because she played five years of collegiate basketball, is not a true senior, shoots 40 times a game, and is 25 years old playing against teenagers.

None of that is true. … [But] she doubled down on her inaccuracies throughout the week. She responded to critics with demeaning memes of white women. She called those questioning her ‘them’ and ‘ignorant.’ Here’s what one of those memes looked like:

Eventually, amid the backlash, Swoopes appeared again on the podcast and remarked:

For people to come at me and say that I made those comments [about Clark] because I’m a racist … First of all, black people can’t be racist; but that’s the farthest thing from my mind.

We’ve covered this non-argument before. The idea that black people can’t be racist makes no sense, but a handful of sociology professors in the UK have apparently convinced a lot of people otherwise. Swoopes is essentially saying that, if you so much as commit a microaggression against her — say, you praise her hairstyle or ask her where she was born — then you deserve to lose your job. But if someone, say, knocks a white woman over while calling her the b-word, then that’s definitely not racist. That’s equity.

This is the kind of anti-white racism that Caitlin Clark is now very familiar with. Just last week, for instance, The Tennessean ran a piece arguing: “Caitlin Clark’s whiteness makes her more marketable. That’s not racist. It’s true.” The thrust of the article is that “whiteness” has “enduring marketability,” and the media is racist because of their, “prior refusal to push the WNBA with the same fervor it’s had this year.” There’s also a complaint that Caitlin Clark has a deal with Nike, while it’s relatively rare for a “Black WNBA player” to have a, “signature shoe with a major brand.”

In other words, Caitlin Clark is only getting all this attention because she’s white. Never mind the fact that there are other white players in the WNBA who haven’t achieved anywhere near as much attention. And never mind the fact that Caitlin Clark set several all-time records — becoming the first player in Division-I history to have consecutive 1,000-point seasons, as well the all-time scoring leader with nearly 4,000 career points. We’re supposed to pretend, according to the Tennesseean, that none of this really matters. All the fans and Nike really care about is that she’s white. Because of course Nike has never endorsed any black athletes. It’s not as though the most iconic and profitable athlete brand endorsement of all time was Nike’s endorsement of a black guy named Michael Jordan. It’s not as though LeBron James makes hundreds of millions a year on endorsements. None of that has ever happened, obviously.

But as insane as all this may be, there’s a lot of this kind of commentary going around. A lot of it’s pretty explicit. For example, there was also the Las Vegas Aces player, A’ja Wilson, saying that Clark is only popular because she’s white. From NBC Boston:

Though Clark hasn’t said anything to fuel the Black-white narrative surrounding her meteoric rise, talks about a double standard are being had. ‘I think it’s a huge thing. I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is,’ Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson said when asked about the race element in Clark’s popularity and before she recently signed two major endorsement deals. … ‘They don’t see it as marketable, so it doesn’t matter how hard I work. It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.’

Translation: Put aside the fact that A’ja Wilson herself also has a deal with Nike and a signature shoe. Ignore the fact that A’ja Wilson didn’t perform nearly as well as Caitlin Clark did in college, or come anywhere close to matching her career points record or any of her other records. And disregard how many people find it more enjoyable to watch Caitlin Clark’s style of play than A’ja Wilson’s. You can’t consider any of this. All you can consider is that Caitlin Clark is white.

Jemele Hill has said something similar, claiming that Clark’s fame is “problematic” and related to her “race and sexuality.”

But, true to form, no one said it dumber than the women of “The View.” Watch:

You just heard Sunny Hostin say that Caitlin Clark benefits from being white, straight, and also “tall.” She actually used the term “tall privilege.” I guess the implication is that the short players deserve endorsement deals, to make up for the fact that they’re not as good at basketball. Or maybe the idea is that Caitlin Clark is the first tall person to ever succeed in basketball. Which is true if you don’t count literally every other basketball player ever, except for maybe Muggsy Bogues.

But against all odds, there was actually something interesting in what Sunny Hostin said, although not in the way she intended. She made the point that the WNBA is overwhelmingly black. And that’s true. Well over 60% of the players are black.

Even aside from the more overt anti-white racism that Caitlin Clark has been subjected to, that fact raises perhaps a bigger and more noticeable point here — which is that Caitlin Clark isn’t being celebrated as a pioneer or a champion of diversity. The WNBA, like the NBA, has very few white players. Even fewer who are stars. Anyone who champions diversity should celebrate Clark explicitly because she is white. Yet even those in the media who are friendly to Clark will certainly not applaud her for helping to diversify the WNBA. Sunny Hostin certainly isn’t celebrating Clark bringing diversity to the league. Instead, she’s doing segments justifying the fact she just got knocked over on the court, and accusing her of having “Tall privilege.”

If anything highlights how fraudulent the so-called diversity or DEI movements really are, it’s this. It’s the relentless effort to demean Caitlin Clark — the single most “diverse” star in the WNBA’s history — at every possible turn. Even when she’s attacked on the court, they’re still ridiculing her.

And of course, the whole episode also exposes, once again, the lie behind the feminist push for the WNBA. They don’t actually want more people to see women’s sports. All that time they lamented the non-existent attendance numbers and ticket sales, they didn’t mean any of it. They’d rather push more racial grievances. That is their only goal. It’s a goal that’s all-consuming, obsessive, and fundamentally, at its core, anti-white. It destroys everything it touches. And now, at last, it might be what finally kills the WNBA for good.

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