Why Angel Reese Vs. Caitlin Clark ‘Rivalry’ Is Complex

The WNBA kicked off its 29^th season this weekend, and the racism and misogyny quickly followed.

Superstars Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky and Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever renewed their rivalry with a flagrant foul by Clark and a few choice words between the two. In the NBA, no one probably would have even noticed, but in the WNBA the two players have become stand-ins for racialized sexual politics.

So what in reality was just a brief basketball moment became online and in the media another racially charged opportunity for the haters to go after these players.

None of this is on Clark, who has spoken out against racism, or Reese. They both acknowledge their rivalry is just competitive basketball, and, usually, this kind of rivalry is good for the sport because it draws interest and viewers. Only in this case, the rivalry has drawn racists and misogynists who use Clark and Reese as springboards to spew racist, misogynist hatred that extends far beyond basketball.

Clark, who is white, drew new audiences to women’s basketball during her NCAA tenure at Iowa. She and Reese, who is black, first tangled in college, where the rivalry quickly devolved into racist venom directed at Reese, for everything from her long eyelashes to her intense play. Instead of seeing two passionate players, many fans saw racial representatives and responded accordingly.

New Fans Came To The WNBA Because Of Angel Reese And Caitlin Clark

When both were drafted into the WNBA last year, new fans followed, especially a lot of young white men, and the racism, misogyny, and homophobia increased in a league that had been known for its efforts to promote inclusion, equity, and justice.

A lot of white people seem to want to pretend that their hatred of Reese has nothing to do with race. They say it’s because she’s a dirty player or she’s too full of herself, not because she’s black. But in the U.S., it’s impossible not to see people through the lens of race. We are not colorblind, and it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

When white people see Angel Reese taunting other players, they see something very different than if Breanna Stewart or Sabrina Ionescu or even Caitlin Clark did the exact same things. And let’s not forget how gender shapes race. People see these things differently, too, because it a black woman doing them, especially when these actions are directed toward Clark.

That Reese and Clark came along at the same time created the perfect storm to allow racism to take hold in the league. They became the perfect pair for the country to project its racial and gender tensions onto, especially as the league for the first time drew in young white men who were fans of Clark (and Clark is not responsible for the racism and misogyny they brought with them).

The League Is Trying To Address Racism, But More Needs To Be Done

Reese said fans at the Sky-Fever game hurled racial insults at her. The league is investigating. The league has denounced racism. Yet, at the same time, the league is benefitting from the rivalry with high attendance and TV viewership, and often announcers and sports writers highlight the rivalry without weighing or even acknowledging the costs of talking about the two players as if the intersection of race and gender is not central in how people perceive their play.

Granted, Clark was last year’s Rookie of the Year and has accomplished amazing things in her college and early pro career. That she has become the face of a league that is made up mostly of black players and has been built on the long labors of black and queer players is problematic, and the league has yet to figure out what to do about it.

Back in October, the New York Times documented the rise in overt racism, sexism, and homophobia directed toward players with the influx of new fans. Reese isn’t the only one who has encountered harassing and threatening behavior. Brittney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury has long endured racist and homophobic taunts. After the Connecticut Sun’s DiJonai Carrington unintentionally poked Clark in the eye in one game, she received an email that threatened violence and used racist language.

Social media are particularly fraught for players as women, especially if they are women of color or queer. After the first game of last year’s WNBA finals, the New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and her wife Marta Xargay received threatening homophobic emails. The misogyny, racism, and homophobia online are so bad that the league is taking steps to educate players on how to protect themselves online, even as they try to promote the league and their own personal brands.

The problem, however, is that what we really need is to figure out how to teach fans, announcers, sports writers, and anyone else with an opinion about the WNBA not to be misogynistic, racist, and homophobic. Haters gonna hate, true. But why do the rest of us put up with? These players deserve better.

So, while the league does its thing, maybe the rest of us would do well to start at home by first examining our own lenses of race, gender, and sexuality and then by calling for better from the people around us, the TV stations, the announcers, the sponsors, the sports writers, the social media trolls. We probably as individuals have more power to address this problem than does the league because we can speak to the people we know, we can email broadcast networks, we can respond on social media. We can make sexist, racist, homophobia behavior unacceptable. Social pressure is a powerful tool.

While these forces have always been present in the WNBA, the current political moment has emboldened haters to be more overt with their loathsomeness. The response from the league and from fans has to be equally emboldened and smart. Players gonna play, and they should be able to do so without being called vile names or threatened with violence.