Women’s basketball has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years, though the players in the WNBA do not make anywhere near the amount of money that male players in the NBA do. It is disturbing that racism is raising its ugly head in the game as so-called fans yell racist abuse at players.
Indiana Fever’s defeat to the Connecticut Sun in the WNBA playoffs was marred as representatives from both teams, as well as the league, stepped in to condemn racist abuse around the game.
Fever star Caitlin Clark has become one of the most high-profile sports stars in the United States during her rookie season. That has led to a significant amount of racist, sexist and homophobic comments online from people purporting to defend Clark, who is white, in a league where the majority of players are Black and many are gay.
During Wednesday’s game, which Connecticut won 87-81 in their home arena to seal a 2-0 series victory, there were reports of racist abuse from some in the crowd. Some of the Sun’s players have also been the subject of abuse online. Clark was left with a black eye in Game 1 of the series after a foul by DiJonai Carrington. Both players say the injury was unintentional. Before Wednesday’s game Carrington shared on social media an email she received which called her a racist slur before the sender said they hope someone “rapes you and cuts your head off.”
The racism seems to have intensified after Clark, an exceptionally talented player, entered the WNBA this year after a very successful college career. She is white and some people seemed to think that she was being targeted by other players and discriminated against because she is white. This intensified when she was left off the roster for the summer Olympics, although there were good reasons for it. Right wing politicians seized on this.
After Clark was left off the USA women’s basketball Olympic team earlier this month, I raised an eyebrow myself. She’s a phenomenal player and athlete and someone who should hold the lion’s share of the credit for the WNBA’s massive increase in popularity. But, as is often the case in sports discourse, multiple things can be true at once. Clark is also an inexperienced rookie, who, aside from a few standout performances (including Sunday’s win over the Chicago Sky), has had a rocky start to her WNBA career – she leads the league in turnovers per game. And when it comes to adding her to the Olympic roster, the US selection committee would have had to alter the roles of skilled guards like Diana Taurasi and Sabrina Ionescu.
Sure, some level of head-scratching was justified. But when you look at the full picture, it’s clear why Clark was left off the Olympic roster, and any further uproar about the situation is a waste of breath. Unfortunately though, we live in a political culture that loves to waste breath.
Politicians, pundits, and fans from across the right decried the decision. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley took to X, as did the official account for the House Judiciary GOP, further inflaming a conversation around Clark that was already chaotic. ESPN’s Pat McAfee even invoked Clark’s race when he argued that she deserved more credit than the rest of the WNBA’s (mostly Black) rookie class for helping to popularize the sport.
…But the striking thing about the strife around Caitlin Clark is that she has done nothing to provoke the controversy herself. An inherently uncontroversial figure, Clark is the personification of far-right pundit Laura Ingraham’s infamous “shut up and dribble” sentiment, which echoes a long-standing belief on the right that athletes – or the ones they disagree with anyway – should leave politics out of sports. And yet, it is those very same people who are attempting to draw Clark away from neutrality. Indiana congressman Jim Banks, for example, sent a letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert asking her to discipline Chicago Sky guard Chennedy Carter for knocking Clark down during a game earlier this month. Like Reese’s hit on Sunday, it was a hard foul, but the idea that it needed to be escalated by an elected official is just as ridiculous as when Louisiana governor Jeff Landry proposed stripping the scholarships of LSU women’s basketball players who were not present during the national anthem at the start of one of their games. As LSU coach Kim Mulkey explained, the players only happened to miss the anthem because of a pre-game routine, but no explanation will ever be good enough for conservatives who weaponize innocuous events to make a name for themselves. Republicans are experts at opposition because it’s kind of the point of their party: to conserve or even regress on the issues that matter most to Americans. Without a sense of progress, they have resorted to self-serving stances that are increasingly desperate.
Right wingers often claim that Black people see racism when it is not there, that they love to wallow in victimhood. But ss we see in this case, it is they who are ‘playing the race card’ (as they like to say) so that they can get publicity.
Hm. The recent post regarding Mark Robinson shows that there exist Black Republicans, and if Republicans are considered right-wingers, this is equivalent to claiming that some Black people see racism when it is not there, that they love to wallow in victimhood.
A corollary is that, since Mano is not a right-winger, that claim is not exclusive to right-wingers.
“players in the WNBA do not make anywhere near the amount of money that male players in the NBA do”
I have never in my life spent a penny to watch a basketball game, played by men or women. I have, therefore, never materially affected how much either get paid. I am further therefore not really in much of a position to comment on their relative pay levels, which are surely set by how many people are prepared to buy tickets, merch and sorts channel subscriptions. Sports team owners like money. When womens games bring in the same money as men’s games, you can be sure the market will quickly equalise pay. So anyone who cares enough about the pay disparity to bring it up has a straightforward course of action -- buy a season ticket for womens games and loads of wnba merch. All the money those men are paid comes from punters.
John Morales@1,
Hm. That makes no sense. Since Mano did not say all right wingers claim Black people see racism when it’s not there, he did not imply that some Black people do so. But even if Mano had said that all right wingers claim that Black people see racism when it is not there (and hence that some Black people -- the right wing ones, such as Robinson -- claim that Black people see racism when it’s not there), that would not imply that Mano thinks some Black people see racism when it’s not there.
KG, thing is, the sets of Black people and of right-wingers are evidently not entirely disjoint, as Mark Robinson exemplifies.
I think that you think it makes no sense to understand that “Right wingers often claim that Black people see racism when it is not there” includes Black right wingers and the implications thereof because you imagine it was based on the premise that I used the universal quantifier, something I evidently did not do.
I merely used the same generalisation as applicable to the elements in common.
Perhaps the intent might have been “Right wingers [who are not Black] often claim that Black people see racism when it is not there”, odd as that construction appears to me, but I think the language was kinda vague and therefore made my comment on that basis.
#1 John
So? Mano’s statement “Right wingers often claim…” does not imply the claim is exclusive to them, or even that it is more commonly claimed by them than by other groups.
___
#2 sonof
That’s a bold claim! I wouldn’t even rate that as 50/50; I think it much more likely women’s pay will lag significantly behind such parity of profit, and probably only after strong public outcry.
Um, I nowhere intimated any supposed exclusivity, Holms.
For the third and final time, what I noted is that right-wingers does not exclude Blacks, and so it follows that generalisations about right-wingers that do not explicitly exclude Black right-wingers apply to those Blacks too.
What is of interest is that, in this case, the particular generalisation is reflexive because the proposition is about the relation of right-wingers to Blacks, not whether that relation is exclusive to right-wingers.
2) sonofrojblake: “When womens games bring in the same money as men’s games, you can be sure the market will quickly equalise pay.”
See women’s soccer and tennis, e.g. Also consider the vicious cycle of less coverage = fewer viewers --> less money for women’s sports --> women less able to devote their time to improving their play while trying to make a living --> less interest --> less coverage. Also entrenched beliefs from those controlling the purse strings. Tennis has vastly improved, but still isn’t there yet, despite women’s tournaments ofen drawing equal or greater attendance and viewership. Where disparities still exist, the pay gap is disproportionate to those disparities. The point being that the assertion that the market will “quickly” equalize pay has proven not to be true. It’s required threats of strikes and lawsuits to get the purseholders to budge at all.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/20/football/womens-world-cup-pay-prize-money-spt-intl-dg/index.html
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/tennis/2023/us-open-prize-money-gender-pay-gap-1234736498/
https://askwonder.com/research/comparison-women-s-men-s-professional-sports-tv-viewership-rating-ng0c0h7p7
Mark Robinson is a horrible bigot who happens to also be Black. This is no more remarkable than women who hold very sexist views, as all of us live in racist and sexist societies.
This is why right-wingers have such hate for the concepts of equity and social justice that they describe as ‘woke’.
As to the OP, sports fans being racist and misogynistic asshats is standard practice.
The entire field of professional sports is a crap show built on a foundation of toxic masculinity, so it’s not surprising that ‘fans’ are flooding the players with abusive comments over social media.
It’s quite telling that the only example of this abuse given in the body of the article is the fact that the white player was accidentally given a black eye by a black player, despite that incident not being an example of the racism that is being directed towards POC.
John Morales@4,
But there is no justification for doing so in what Mano said. His statement left open the possibilities that all Black right wingers claim Blacks see racism where there is none, that none do so, or that some do and some don’t. But even if you assume the first or second of these possibilities, this does not imply that Mano thinks that any Blacks see racism where there is none, and I’m puzzled that you think it does. How do you get to that conclusion? Try setting out your reasoning step by step. (If you answer in Pharyngula’s Infinite Thread, I’ll see it.)
I wholeheartedly endorse Ridana’s comment. In addition, I would like to point out that over on Wonkette and Pervert Justice I’ve been covering Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, racism targeting Reese and other Black players and how that racism is connected with supposed fans of Clark (not that any of them actually appreciate women’s basketball or have even gone to 3 WNBA games in their lives).
Finally, let me address this:
> I am further therefore not really in much of a position to comment on their relative pay levels, which are surely set by how many people are prepared to buy tickets, merch and sorts channel subscriptions. Sports team owners like money. When womens games bring in the same money as men’s games, you can be sure the market will quickly equalise pay.
Nope. One big obvious huge thing you’re missing is that the number of games matters. The first women’s professional league in North America was the ABL. It played during the traditional basketball season and so overlapped with the NBA schedule. The NBA took a number of actions specifically designed to hurt the financial position of the ABL and they were successful, running the ABL out of business. (This was documented at the time.)
Surprise, surprise, but the WNBA that briefly overlapped with and ultimately supplanted the ABL played fewer games per season and limited their season to times when the NBA was not playing. This meant that shows focussed on basketball were not broadcasting, which contributed to a dearth of coverage which contributed to lower viewership and attendance, which contributed to lesser revenues (both seat sales and advertising).
But here’s the thing, even with all those other smaller structures amplifying each other, at the core was a decision that the NBA made that they didn’t want their daughter league to compete with the men, and the result was not merely playing in the offseason, but, again, fewer games.
With many of the costs of running a sports team fixed on an annual basis, holding more games, which means more broadcast games, which means more ad revenue even when viewership remains the same, greatly increases the profitability of a league.
As long as the sexism of the NBA owners causes them to force the WNBA to play an abbreviated summer schedule, there is no chance for the women to catch up, even should the numbers be comparable.
And make no mistake, viewership for women’s college games are over 60% of viewership for men’s college games, but the NCAA and its divisions sold the TV rights for 5% of the contract for men’s college basketball. They could have argued that 60% viewership means 60% price, but they did not. They didn’t fight for the TV rights to be valued equivalently to the viewership quality women’s play brings in.
The idea that greed means that if women’s sports CAN make as much as men’s sports that it WILL make as much as men’s sports is simply not borne out by the facts. Indeed, the NCAA is so deeply hostile to women’s sports that it had banned using the phrase “march madness” in connection with the Women’s Basketball NCAA tournament.
That only changed a couple years ago after they got caught out for their obvious sexism when during covid isolation it was easy to see that the facilities and food provided to men and women in their respective tournaments was completely unequal. Men got multiple weight rooms so that teams didn’t have to lift with other schools’ players overhearing them talking about their conditioning — wouldn’t want someone to overhear about a nagging injury. Women
did not even get a SINGLE weight room. Instead they got a few dumbbells in the corner of a larger room. Men got to select from a larger menu and received unlimited portions to make sure they got the correct nutrition and increased calories that they needed during competition. HAHAHAHAHA women got …not that.
It was while players who knew and cared about each other — often from the same schools, but also I believe that there was a brother and sister — went about documenting the NCAA’s blatant sexism that the long simmering resentment over women’s basketball being shut out of the “march madness” advertising boiled over and suddenly ESPN noticed that they’d been prohibited for years from saying “march madness” when discussing women’s games. Whoops! They’d somehow missed that. But now that players brought it forward, ESPN and other sports journalists called belated bullshit on the NCAA’s trademarked devaluation of women athletes and their accomplishments.
There is simply no way anyone can credibly claim that capitalism will fix this. The NCAA has always had the capitalist motive to sell women’s sports TV rights for max value, but it not only refused to negotiate for what women are worth, it refused even to advertise the women’s game despite Capitalism 101 telling us that advertising increases market demand and market demand increases price.
Anyway, rant mostly over, but this idea that somehow this is women’s fault and if they just produced a quality product then everyone would watch and they’d get paid and why are we whining about sexism is just the most ignorant claptrap imaginable.
Women ballers get paid less because men want to pay women ballers less. The NBA and NCAA make that absolutely clear. Would WNBA players today earn exactly the same as NBA players? Nope. But that’s not the same as saying that if we ditched the sexism their salaries would stay exactly the same. They wouldn’t. They’d play more games, they’d get more coverage, the NBA would see them as an asset to promote instead of a threat to NBA viewership to contain to off-months, and salaries would increase drastically with the additional ticket sales and ad revenue.
Gah. This capitalism fixes everything mindset is just so annoying.
@Tethys:
There was this example:
Crip Dyke @#10,
That was so enlightening. Thanks!
@Crip Dyke: posting from my phone, so this will be short.
You know much more about this than me, and you have changed my mind.
Thank you.
@sonofrojblake
Does this apply to all aspects of our lives ?
The day women contribute as much in the workplace they will be paid the same or The day women are as competent in the workplace they will be promoted the same
If not what makes sport different ?
If I’m understanding him correctly, is someone saying that there aren’t Black right-wingers who claim that too many Black people see racism where there isn’t any? Because that would be absurd due to the existence of Black right-wingers who claim that too many Black people see racism where there isn’t any.