WNBA’s Caitlin Clark Wins TIME’s ‘Athlete of the Year,’ Promptly Goes Woke
I haven’t followed Caitlin Clark’s college-to-pro-basketball trajectory super closely. But I’ve paid enough attention to her career to know that she’s resisted the relentless pull and tug from mainstream media and sports figures to go woke at a time when there has been a clear race-based resentment from some legacy WNBA players (and commentators) over Clark’s meteoric rise to stardom, starting in her days as an Iowa Hawkeyes basketball record-setter to being the star player for the Indiana Fever.
As the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end, though, and it looks like Clark’s resistance to woke forces has weakened, something we learned after it was announced that TIME Magazine had named her their “Athlete of the Year.”
In an article where there was a heavy dose of acknowledgment that some of the criticism of Clark comes from black female sports figures who claim her race was a “huge” factor in her success and in bringing new fans to the league, TIME claimed Clark was “cognizant of the racial underpinnings of her stardom” as though it was an established fact that her race got her to where she is today.
Here’s how Clark responded to it:
Clark is cognizant of the racial underpinnings of her stardom. “I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” says Clark. “A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
Needless to say, Clark bending the knee to the Woke Mob did not go over well with people who had previously admired her staying above the noise machine:
My thought process on this is that while her comments are disappointing, Clark is still young and getting her sea legs in a league where the huge egos and the propensity for hurt feelings are just as dominant and prevailing as they are in any other professional sports league, where rings also have to be kissed.
Right now, she’s just trying to play ball and get away from being turned into the spectacle, and she’s saying what she thinks she needs to do in order to earn respect from people from whom she likely will never get it. As soon as she grows up a bit more and figures that out she’ll probably look back on these comments and cringe.
In any event, it’s just another reminder not to put sports icons too high up on pedestals because they are human, and it is inevitable that, at some point, they are bound to let you down.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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