Let’s Call It What It Is: A Breakdown of the Racial Conversations Around the NCAA Women’s National Championship
Photo courtesy of Angel Reese via Instagram
“We want to see her birth certificate!”
This was our white opponents’ parents’ demands when my team of Black 10-year-old girls swept tournaments of 12- and 13-year-olds. There was no way Black girls could outsmart and outplay white girls and not be way older than them!
Remember 2020? Everyone – yes, everyone – was protesting and professing that alas – we all finally understand how racism bleeds through the US! I’m going to need white folks to look back at their posts from 2020, back when they were committed to allyship, and pick up some of those books they bought and dig deep. If racism is everywhere, how is sport somehow exempt?
Angel Reese, a 20 something-year-old Black woman, stat-stuffing 6-foot, 3-inch hooper, who happens to be unabashedly herself on and off the court – clearly understood the assignment. Angel and Alexis Morris, the smooth guard, with high IQ and a jumpshot to match – they caught the drift loud and clear when Caitlin Clark, the latest face of white women victims, waved off Raven Johnson, a Black guard for South Carolina, in the Final Four matchup. Alexis actually spoke on it – that she took the disrespect personally. Monica Czinano, Caitlin’s screen-setting partner, even boasted pre-game that Caitlin is by far the “best trash talker in the game.” So when Angel spoke up after LSU won the chip, she made it clear that she understood the racial undertones, because that win, she said, “was for girls who look like me.”
But how did Angel and Alexis lead their team to victory when they earned the national title on Saturday? They utilized their basketball IQ to execute a patient, calculated game plan. Alexis patiently exploited Iowa’s defense by hitting shots all over the perimeter and mid-range. Angel’s patience and IQ was illustrated when her defender, Czinano couldn’t play fair down low and threw one too many obvious elbows at LSU post players. Czinano’s white luck finally ran out when her unsportsmanlike and very obvious intentional fouls added up to disqualification early in the contest against LSU.
As a Black woman athlete, coming up playing elite basketball and eventually Division 1, the adultification and hypocrisy begins quite early. And within sport culture, we (Black folks) get used to this abuse, which worsens in high school, because we’re viewed as culpable adults. The racist taunting becomes harsher and more sexualized, more overtly racist. How many of you former Black athletes, male or female, remember when we were kids going up against white teams and their parents and fans screaming and slinging expletives at us? How many remember being called niggers and nigger bitches, animals, or filthy? How many remember every inch of our bodies being examined and adorned as “freakishly athletic” or “too big” or “too curvy” for sport?
Watching the South Carolina vs. Iowa Final Four game as a former Black women’s basketball athlete was triggering, at best. Then, watching LSU win the chip after Iowa disrespected their “SEC sisters,” as Angel described, was the type of vindication that we all needed! Though, we knew the conversations about Angel Reese and the LSU team would persist and truly show us just how racialized sports can truly be.
The DOUBLE STANDARD
White girl does something = she’s a badass, she’s dope, it’s funny, just having fun, etc.
Black girl does something= she’s ghetto, unsportsmanlike, classless, immature, etc.
As a media ecologist, I can go way back into the historical tropes pervasive of Black women's identities within the media and how these very historical stereotypes carry into what we are witnessing today. I researched some very similar racist and sexist norms within sport when I analyzed case studies on Serena Williams’ media coverage versus her opponent, Maria Sharapova, and the horrific misogynoir against Rutgers’ 2007 women's basketball team when Don Imus called them out of their names. What I found was a reflection of the system this country was set up on. Whiteness must be upheld by all means, and Blackness, a stark departure from whiteness, is unacceptable, especially when we are displaying excellence.
The uproar for Caitlin, the best trash talker in the game (per her teammates), reminds me of how police arrive at scenes when antagonizing Karen’s call 911 on Black folks in parks after viciously harassing them. Jill Biden, First Lady of the US, who attended the national championship game, has said she’s going to tell Joe to extend an invitation to the poor white girls who lost the game, because “they played so well,” and because they illustrate “how far women’s sports have come” since Title IX. Dr. Biden, your color blind feminism must be stopped.
Angel Reese is sitting in this seat for her generation. Unapologetic in her existence, and using her voice to say NO to the unjust things that have been going on long before social media put everything on replay. LSU athletics, I implore you, hire a media representative, to speak up for your Black women’s basketball players. Angel is eloquent, consciously aware, and confident to speak for herself. However, she is a student-athlete, who should not have to carry this load of addressing misogynoir on her back. Hire professionals – former women’s athletes, speakers, mental health experts – to come talk to the team in the off season and throughout the season – to keep them well, inspired, and grounded, as they will continue to face vicious racism and sexism out loud on the biggest stages in sport.
I STAND WITH ANGEL!
