Another View
Historically, American sports media can’t function without a Great White Hope (GWH) to promote to fans. Iowa’s Caitlin Clark is currently their flavor of the month.
“To say that some in America aren’t desperate to have a White American-born superstar would be insincere,” wrote John Celestrand in “Word In Black” after last week’s South Carolina-Iowa WBB national title game. “This game was a dream matchup,” he added—a mostly all-Black team (South Carolina) led by a Black coach (Dawn Staley) against a virtually all-White Iowa team with the senior Clark, whose team relies on her a lot for three-point shooting.
Black vs white is an obvious storyline that too many sports media and fans love to push.
Although Staley’s team won—her third national championship in seven years—it was with a squad that lost all five starters from a year ago to graduation but went unbeaten from wire to wire this season. Yet the spotlight stayed on Clark, who played on a runners-up team for the second consecutive year.
“There’s so many editorial stories in an undefeated championship basketball team, but [you] have the emphasis and focus be on the star player of the losing team,” said journalist Daric L. Cottingham on her “I Know That’s Right” podcast.
Clark didn’t make herself America’s latest GWH, but America’s mainstream media crowned her as such.
“Unless you were a basketball enthusiast, you really didn’t know that Dawn Staley and South Carolina went undefeated,” observed University of Louisville Assistant Professor Dr. Ajhanai Keaton during an MSR phone interview last week. She studies how race and gender intersect in many areas, including business, higher education, and sports.
In her April 8 commentary for Bloomberg, Keaton said, “Viewing sports through a race-, gender-, or class-neutral lens disregards how competition can magnify social inequity.”
Although South Carolina was favored to win the game, it was Clark who was put ahead of her team in terms of pre-game buildup. This is mainly because the Gamecocks are this century’s Georgetown, the mostly all-Black team led by a Black coach (the late John Thompson) to national prominence during the 1980s, which included a national title and three national game appearances in four years.
The Hoyas men then and the women Gamecocks today were lovingly promoted as bad guys by mainstream media mainly because they were all-Black teams. This is because sports media for the most part has the power to push any narrative they so choose. And the GWH narrative fits so neatly in their reporting.
A recent commentary in “The Root” summed this up: “Black fans are keenly aware of the racial dynamics at play. They recognize the animus that comes with the pursuit of Black excellence” as it relates to South Carolina’s successful quest for a national title. “Black Americans root for quarterbacks, coaches and players who look like them,” it concluded.
“The media is spinning like Caitlin Clark has saved women’s basketball or put women’s basketball on the map,” continued Keaton. “But the product of women’s basketball has always been amazing.”
“We’re not hating on Caitlin,” stressed the professor. “But what we’re trying to get the media to see is [that] you’re now creating a narrative that has positioned Caitlin as the Great White Hope, and I would argue that’s unfair upon her. It’s at the expense of Black women’s equality.”
Sista anchors
During its Women’s Final Four telecasts, ESPN had five sistahs on its anchor desk.
“For me to be myself, and to have so much fun…it was special,” Andraya Carter, one of the anchors, told reporters last week during a Zoom call that included the MSR. “It was Carolyn Peck leading the way. Elle Duncan and Chihey. I looked to my right and to my left… I was honored every show to be up there.”
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I think this is a bit of an intellectually lazy argument being presented in this case. There have been plenty of great white lady hoopers before Clark that didn’t have the same connection with the nation. Diana Taurasi is arguably the the greatest women’s player of the modern era was celebrated but not elevated to Clark’s status. Clark’s style of play actually provides greater insight into what what created the phenomena and the male counterpart in many ways is one Wardell Stephen Curry. Steph’s junior season at Davidson captured the nation because no one had seen a player with his type of game along with the fact that he played on a team that frankly didn’t have the talent of the big boys. There are lots of parallels with this and Clark’s situation at Iowa. Had she gone to UConn, USC or LSU, she would have been a story for her style of play but it likely wouldn’t have turned her into a national superstar. So once you highlight those components, then I think it’s fair to ask how race may have factored in. And the the answer is certainly, but this isn’t the case of a propped up superstar of yesteryear, but a legit talent that had the benefit of looking more like ~70% of the population. So I’d say Caitlin is more Eminem than Tim Tebow, lol.