Is Caitlin Clark A Victim Of Jealousy Or Racism - Or Both?

I don’t pretend to be a fan of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). However, it’s no secret that the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark is the league’s reigning superstar and a major reason for the WNBA’s increased popularity recently. This makes Clark’s omission from a 30^th anniversary celebration poster a major news story. Why did it happen?

The facile answer is that Clark herself did not permit her image to be used by the company that produced the celebration poster. Fair enough. The problem with this explanation, however, is that Clark’s stardom is of the magnitude that you’d think someone in authority could pull some strings (including convincing Clark to make an exception if necessary) to make sure her image was included. If any effort was made in this direction, there was no evidence of it in the wall-to-wall media coverage of the omission.

To dig more deeply into this situation, some uncomfortable truths need to be expressed about why Clark is a beloved and a hated figure at the same time. In researching this, it’s easy to find articles discussing game referees ignoring flagrant fouls on Clark, and Clark’s injury troubles being at least in part due to hard fouls against her. Is she being singled out because of what a great player she is, or is there an element of jealousy, or, dare we say it, racism involved from the mostly black players? Why do the referees seemingly turn a blind eye toward hard fouls against Clark?

The advent of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, although most influential during the post-George Floyd era, actually started to bloom during the Obama years. In my former job, I attended a mandatory seminar on “diversity training” about 15 years ago. The training was presented by an older white guy who obviously was a liberal proponent of “white guilt.” As evidence, at one point, he noted without batting an eye that, “There is no such thing as black on white racism. This is because African-Americans are not in positions of power to exercise racism, even if they wanted to.” Keep in mind, this training session was conducted while Barack Obama sat in the White House and Eric Holder was his Attorney General – just two of the most prominent examples. If I didn’t think I’d lose my job over it, I would have stood up and forcefully corrected this very incorrect assertion on the trainer’s part. However, his claim was nonetheless useful as an educational eye-opener into the mind of a liberal – one who believes black people are perpetual victims no matter how many of them explode this stereotype.

It’s clear that white liberals’ kid-glove treatment of African-Americans, most pronounced since the initial election of President Obama, has had a detrimental effect on race relations. Some in the African-American community developed an attitude of entitlement over the years, much the same as a spoiled child would. This explains the demands from some quarters of the black community for reparations from the days of slavery, never mind that the current generations are far removed from that period and perhaps didn’t even have ancestors who were slaves. Why is it such a stretch to believe that Clark’s black opponents – and even perhaps her teammates – feel resentment toward her because not only is she a super-talented basketball player, but she also happens to be white?

Fox News host Will Cain, in his daily show last week, actually started to make a comparison of what Clark is experiencing to Jackie Robinson when he broke the color barrier in major league baseball. I think he realized that was a bridge too far. However, what Clark is going through – the lack of respect from other players, the obvious fouls that are not called – does bear some resemblance, though not on nearly the scale, of what Robinson experienced. In either case, the actions of those who try to sabotage the career of a star player who only wants to compete at the highest level are contemptible. The WNBA needs to support Clark, if for no other purpose than she’s the main reason for the league’s increased popularity. If a desire to be “woke” is behind the league’s tepid support to date and failure to discipline her tormentors, then they need to put that to a quick end, if only for their long-term survival. A recent one-day suspension of a player who allegedly punched Clark is a small step in the right direction, and needs to be followed with more of the same.