Getty A'ja Wilson (l) and Caitlin Clark (r).
WNBA star A’ja Wilson says she believes that Indiana Fever player Caitlin Clark’s race is a “huge” reason why Clark is so popular.
The comments from Wilson came in a May 12 article by the Associated Press, which explored the hype around Clark, comparing her to Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird. The story examined whether there are racial double standards at play.
“I think it’s a huge thing. I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is,” Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson told AP. “It really is because you can be top notch at what you are as a Black woman, but yet maybe that’s something that people don’t want to see.”
Clark is white; Wilson is Black.
As with Bird, the counter-argument focuses on Clark’s skills. On March 3, the NCAA wrote that Clark “became the NCAA Division I all-time leading scorer across men’s and women’s basketball. Clark’s career points total surpassed a 54-year mark set by another revolutionary player in former LSU star ‘Pistol’ Pete Maravich, who finished with 3,667 points.”
The NCAA noted: “It was a week for the record books. One game earlier, Clark — a catalyst to the recent rapid growth of women’s basketball — also passed Lynette Woodard’s Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women scoring record of 3,649 points. She also broke the Division I women’s single-season 3-point record of 154, set by Idaho’s Taylor Pierce.”
A’ja Wilson Says It ‘Boils My Blood’ When People Deny Caitlin Clark’s Popularity Is About Race
GettyCaitlin Clark is vying for a spot in the 2024 Olympics.
Wilson told the AP that she doesn’t believe it matters how hard Black women work in women’s basketball.
“They don’t see it as marketable, so it doesn’t matter how hard I work. It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is,” she said.
“There are basketball reasons,” Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor of history at Arizona State University, told the AP. “but also there are racial reasons for why Clark has been able to kind of break off into a completely different stratosphere from players that came before her.”
The Associated Press Article Lays Out a Series of Possible Double Standards Between How Chicago Sky Star Angel Reese & Caitlin Clark Are Treated
GettyAngel Reese.
The Associated Press article listed several incidents that have caused some people to believe there is a racial double standard, some of them comparisons between the treatment received by Chicago Sky star Angel Reese, who is Black, and Clark, her rival on the court in the WNBA and college basketball.
The AP notes that Clark’s first preseason game in the WNBA “was streamed, but Reese’s was not,” and Clark gets more endorsement deals. The AP also questioned “backlash” Reese received for attending the Met Gala before a game.
One controversy occurred when Reese made a “You can’t see me” gesture toward Clark during a basketball game; however, Clark had made the same gesture during an earlier game without drawing the same controversy, according to Fox Sports.
Reese, in a post-game media interview captured in excerpts of the new docuseries “Full Court Press,” said, “I’m too hood; I’m too ghetto. Y’all told me that all year. But when other people do it, y’all don’t say nothing.”
She continued, according to Fox Sports, “So this is for the girls that look like me. That’s going to speak up in what they believe in.”
In the new docuseries “Full Court Press,” which follows the 2023-24 season of Clark, Kamilla Cardoso and Kiki Rice, University if Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder accused the media of ginning up the racial angle.
“The media was trying to create a circus out of racial things, out of trying to make hatred come up, and she [Clark] just wouldn’t let it happen,” she says.