Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark became racial symbols, but their responses tell different stories
An Oct.24 Swish Appeal column connected Atlanta’s enthusiasm for the Dream to the city’s history of "Black excellence, resistance and pride." It quoted a historian who linked the team to Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the "Beloved Community."ANGEL REESE’S WNBA FINALS SHOWED HOW CRITICISM OF HER PLAY BECOMES AN ACCUSATION OF RACISMThere’s nothing wrong with a city seeing its history and culture reflected in its sports teams.
The Pittsburgh Steelers’ name and logo celebrate the steel industry that helped define their city.It’s perfectly reasonable for Atlanta fans to find a similar connection between the Dream and their own community.Angel Reese has embraced representing "people who look like her" throughout her basketball career.
(Getty Images)The problem arises when supporting a player becomes a test of racial loyalty, or criticizing her becomes an attack on the people she supposedly represents.I encountered plenty of that while covering Angel Reese during the Finals.People who disagreed with my questions and columns decided the explanation was that I had a problem with Black women.
Somehow, evaluating one basketball player had become a statement about millions of people I wasn’t writing about.But this fits a much larger pattern involving Reese and Caitlin Clark.For some fans and commentators, they have become stand-ins for Black America and White America.
Their successes and shortcomings get recruited into arguments about privilege, discrimination and whose achievements deserve recognition.But Clark and Reese have responded very differently to those roles.When pressed, Clark has pushed back against people using her name to promote racial agendas but has repeatedly emphasized that basketball is her job.In the closing moments of LSU’s 2023 national championship victory over Iowa, Angel Reese followed Caitlin Clark around the court, repeatedly taunting Iowa's star player.She made the "you can’t see me" gesture, then pointed to her ring fin...