Classy Double Standard
This year's Women's Basketball National Championship highlighted a racist double standard that had the ability to nearly eclipse the game itself. On April 2, Louisiana State University defeated the University of Iowa and won their first NCAA women's college basketball national championship - one accomplishment that should have been one of the biggest stories for women's sports of the year. But what happened in the final seconds is what took front and center. LSU star forward Angel Reese pointed at her ring finger and then did John Cena's 'You Can't See Me,' an iconic hand gesture towards Iowa star Caitlin Clark, as she is the team's best player.
Those actions by Reese led to many conversations about women's sports and hypocrisy on the scale of gender and race. As where in the Men's game, taunting and trash-talking are a way of life, and some might even say you can't have basketball without it, but in this case, the race of each player takes the cake. Clark, who is white, was seen trash-talking, mocking, and steamrolling her competition all tournament, even being praised for it as everyone wanted to label this year's tourney as "The Caitlin Clark Show," but why the shift of energy now? Why is there a discussion about the lack of "class" now? Caitlin Clark gestured, "You can't see me," herself after dropping 40 points on Louisville and was praised for it.
Many believe the appearance of both girls garners the difference in reaction to what they both did, but when you see the people that are on each side, you get a better understanding of what this was really turning into. Do you think the public reaction was justified, or was this another case of race playing an essential role in one being demonized while the other is praised?
Source:
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/03/1167704651/angel-reese-caitlin-clark-you-cant-see-me-gesture
Hey i thought you made a great and informing post. Its sad because i thought trash talking has always been a big part of sports as long as I can remember. Its crazy that people even tried to make this a issue in general. Hopefully people can see this is idioctic and people are allowed to trash talk in sports no matter who they are.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Andrew in the way that I am so confused as to why people blew this whole thing out of proportion. I do think race could have played a part of it but I also think the media has talked Clark up so much that she appears to be America's sweetheart or something. Anything that is done that does not favor her would have been seen as an issue. Fans of Clark are the ones who saw Reese's actions as distasteful and classless. I had gone through the comments on a major post talking about the two and the only people that really seemed to be against Reese, were white people. I think both Reese and Clark have drummed up so much attention for women's basketball and that should really be the main point in all of this. Taunting is a part of the game of basketball and I feel like anyone would say that.
ReplyDeleteHi, I wrote about this as well on my blog. The hate that Angela received was unnecessary and disgusting. As Destini said, the media made Caitlin seem like America's angel. However, she did speak up about it and say that all the comments against Angela were uncalled for. They were both competitors that day and sometimes competitors trash talk. It's basketball, not a tea party. I saw way too many memes against Angela calling her classless and a sore winner. I just saw it as an opportunity for white people to attack a black woman. These people really needed to get up and go touch some grass. I played basketball for 5 years, and I taunted more times than I can count.
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