Misogynoir is an interesting thing because so many groups of people decide to delight in it, even those who are born or nurtured by a Black woman. In 2007, Don Imus, a Great Value Howard Stern, was fired from his radio gig with CBS for calling the women on the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hoes.” What basketball and hair have to do with one another has yet to be determined, but stereotypes about Black athletes, especially Black women, continue to support a false narrative of beastly-like countenance and Black women being inherently less feminine.
White players are rarely fodder for negative stereotypes but, instead, are hoisted into the air as some sort of savior or reminder of white people’s ability to still be able to jump.
In 1910, Jack Johnson, a Black man, fought James Jeffries, a White man and former heavyweight champion, in what would become the “Fight of the Century” and inspire art 85 years later. The 1970 movie, “The Great White Hope,” based on the 1967 play of the same name, was a fictionalization of the events surrounding the boxing match between the two. The 1996 movie, “The Great White Hype,” a comedy, was loosely based on both the story of Johnson and Jeffries and the 1982 fight between Larry Holmes and Gerry Cooney. James Jeffries had initially retired as not to have to box Johnson but came out six years later with white supremacy on the mind; “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” He lost, sparking riots all over the country. The fight between Holmes and Cooney saw white supremacist groups threatening to shoot Holmes. The match between Caitlin Clark, despite heading a team that lost the NCAA women’s basketball championship two years in a row, is the new great white hope for many new fans of the sport and old fans of other traditions.
“Caitlin you are Larry Bird in that you’re an amazing player, you have ties to Indiana and white people are really crazy about you”
— Clark Report (@CClarkReport) July 12, 2024
Host Serena Williams at the #ESPYS#WNBA pic.twitter.com/RDxc3qIG4R
Last night, Serena Williams, who has been pit against Russian tennis player Maria Sharapova, a woman whom she beat 20 out of 22 face-offs, hosted the ESPY Awards and commented on the phenomenon that is Caitlin Clark. “Caitlin, you are Larry Bird, in that you’re an amazing player, you have ties to Indiana and White people are really crazy about you.”
On the Caitlin Clark Xitter page, many people who do not understand racism on a logical level but understand it on a spiritual one were outraged. One Xitter user, @pr0650 wrote, “Divide, divide, divide. Dang, what a waste of a moment to unite,” followed by a broken heart emoji. Unsurprisingly enough, this user is no stranger to actual racist xweets. Those commenting on Williams’ joke are only hurt because it attacks their real value system, white supremacy. Even Larry Bird himself, who has also spoken highly of the Black men who tutored him in the game during his youth, stated, “I just wanted to prove that a white boy who couldn’t run and couldn’t jump could play this game.”
In a sport that finds itself running out of white heroes, Clark is the Larry Bird of her time and is a pathway for many to espouse their misogynoir. This is further proved by the insistence by many commenters that Williams, a woman who has 23 tennis Grand Slam titles, is somehow jealous of Clark, a woman who has yet to clinch one in her collegiate or professional career.
Clark is not a good player; she is a phenomenal one, which makes sense as to why so many white people have rallied around her in support, but it does not make sense why she has remained relatively quiet about the racism used to support her talents. While there are viable arguments that Clark has received on-the-court bullying, it pales in comparison to the cruelty that her rival Angel Reese has received off-the-court and in Clark’s name. The obsession with Reese is not simply based on her talent and beauty but what that looks like juxtaposed against Clark’s. In fact, the state with the highest Google searches for Clark is Iowa, which obviously makes sense; however, it is also the state with the highest Google searches for Reese. The top five states with the highest searches for Clark were all Midwestern states, none of which was Illinois, where Reese is a star on the Chicago Sky team. However, Indiana, where Clark plays, rounds out Reese’s top five search regions.
Earlier this week, Coach Val Whiting, a Black woman who has been a vocal supporter of Clark and Reese and won two NCAA championships, shared an email from William Martina of Roswell, Georgia, and a text from an unknown sender. The nasty email sent to the Angel Reese Foundation, which included Martina’s actual email address and name, read, “Sorry, but you can dress up as anything, but you are what you are. [sic] and thug comes to mind…,[sic] go Caitlin! “
Angel Reese gets a lot of racially motivated hate. I believe she gets this more than any player in the league. Here is a one screenshot that her mother shared with me from a guy named William Martina. He actually used his real name and email address and contacted the Angel Reese… pic.twitter.com/VXYC9mfuCv
— Val Whiting (@iamcoachval) July 10, 2024
The texter wrote to Reese’s mother that her daughter is a Black b*tch and stated that she was jealous of “CC,” referring to Caitlin Clark by her initials.
Clark cannot just be a good player on her own merits to racists, no. Reese has to be used as the metric for how good Clark really is, better than the best Black female player there is.
“What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself?…If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. – Toni Morrison
