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Caitlin Clark Bends The Knee To The Left-Wing Racial Narrative
Here’s a little case study that they probably won’t be teaching anytime soon in business school, even though it’s pretty eye-opening.
This was by far the best year the WNBA has ever had. They set an all-time record for total television viewers, at 54 million. They set an all-time record for the number of telecasts that reached at least a million viewers. They had their highest total attendance in more than two decades, up roughly 50% from last year. The All-Star Game recorded its most fan votes in history, at 10 million votes — more than a 500% increase from last year. The Indiana Fever, the team Caitlin Clark plays for, set an all-time single-season record for attendance by a WNBA team. The league saw a 350% year-over-year growth in subscriptions to their paid streaming service. The league had more social media engagement, more sellout crowds, and more merchandise sales than ever before. This was the kind of season that WNBA executives probably never imagined was even possible.
Given all of these facts, how much money do you think the WNBA made this year? How much cash did this historic season actually bring in?
You might remember that, earlier in this year, there were some estimates that things weren’t looking great. And it turns out that, now that the final numbers are in, those estimates were very accurate. In total, according to the New York Post, the WNBA lost $40 million this year — in its best year on record. They exceeded pretty much every metric in the book, and they managed to earn negative $40 million. This is a business that has never been profitable in its history, and it’s now abundantly clear that nothing can possibly change that. It is a fatally flawed concept because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no interest in watching women play basketball.
That’s one of the many reasons it was illuminating to read Caitlin Clark’s recent front-page article in Time Magazine — which apparently still exists — and which just named Clark their “Athlete of the Year.” This is an interview that includes probably the single biggest backhanded compliment that’s ever been printed in the history of backhanded compliments. And at the same time, it includes Caitlin Clark’s official capitulation to the Left’s anti-white racial narrative, which everyone should’ve seen coming a long time ago.
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Here’s the part I’m talking about, straight from Time Magazine:
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.’
Two things are happening here. First of all, Clark is crediting “Black women” for “building” the WNBA. Without black women, she says, there is no WNBA. She apparently means that as a kind of compliment — even though, in practical terms, it’s a bit like praising Bernie Madoff for managing a successful asset management firm, or Elizabeth Holmes for founding Theranos, or Kenneth Lay for running Enron. Normally when someone creates a business that serves no purpose other than to light people’s money on fire, it’s not something you praise them for. It’s also not even true, by the way. The WNBA was built and is still maintained by the NBA. Men built the WNBA. Without men, the WNBA would not exist.
But Caitlin Clark is coming out and crediting “Black women” for their role in establishing a league that no one watches. She says that black women, in particular, deserve to be elevated. And it’s clear why she’s saying this. She’s saying this because she is, I’m sorry to say, a coward. To protect her endorsement deals and her good status at the WNBA, Clark has decided to affirm the single most destructive lie of the generation, which is that white people are inherently indebted to black people because of their skin color — and that black people, solely on account of their skin color, deserve special treatment at the expense of whites.
There’s no need to explain in any detail how much damage this ideology has caused this country over the past decade. It’s led to grave injustices in every single area of life — for people of every race and both genders. But more importantly than that, of course, it’s wrong as a matter of principle. And most Americans now realize it’s wrong. That’s a big part of the reason Kamala Harris was just defeated. It’s why DEI departments are being gutted all over the place, from college campuses to Fortune 500 companies.
But Clark is clinging to this ideology, and she’s not the only one doing it. More on that in a moment. But to be clear, it’s not surprising that Clark would do something like this. A lot of conservatives are acting shocked by this Time Magazine profile, but the signs weren’t hard to notice.
Just a few months ago on SNL, for example, Clark went out of her way — in the middle of an alleged comedy segment — to credit a series of black women for her success. The video is a little long, but her comments are toward the end. Watch:
Caitlin Clark (@CaitlinClark22) stopped by Weekend Update! pic.twitter.com/SSmbUcIOJl
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) April 14, 2024
She doesn’t name a single white player. And that’s not because there haven’t been “good” white players in the WNBA, at least by the standards of the WNBA. According to the internet — which I’m relying on for all of my information about the WNBA — someone named Sue Bird was pretty good, for example. She played for something called the “Seattle Storm,” which apparently exists. Sue Bird became the first player in the history of the WNBA to win titles in three different decades. She’s one of the greatest female point guards of all-time, apparently. So why isn’t Sue Bird getting credit for “kicking down the doors” so that Caitlin Clark could walk through them?
Of course, maybe the biggest sign that Clark would start openly apologizing for being white was that she got assaulted all season long, and never seemed to have a big issue with it. I’m talking about flagrant attacks on the court, where she was knocked over and jabbed in the eye. All of these attacks were committed by black players, as far as I can tell. And these players never really even expressed remorse. In fact, in some cases they taunted Caitlin Clark afterwards.
Here’s just a small selection of what I’m talking about:
If these clips demonstrate anything, it’s that Caitlin Clark does not have “privilege” of any kind in this league. As a white woman in the WNBA she has anything but privilege. She knows this. She knows it better than anyone. Yet she claims that she has privilege — even after suffering through a season where she was repeatedly physically assaulted because of her race. That’s the privilege of being white in the WNBA. The reason she’s getting attention, on the other hand, is not that she’s white. It’s that she’s good, by league standards. Despite getting physically attacked every game, she set WNBA records for most points by a rookie, most assists, becoming the fastest player to record 300 points, and so on. The reason she’s reviled and abused is purely because of her race.
In fact, this Time Magazine profile makes that very clear. They quote her teammate, Temi Fagbenle, as saying:
In a sport dominated by Black/African-American players, White America has rallied around Caitlin Clark. The support looks mostly amazing, sometimes fanatical and territorial, sometimes racist. It seems that the Great White Hope syndrome is at play again.
That’s quite a teammate. In other words, she’s saying white people are only supporting Caitlin Clark because they want to see a white person dominate a sport that’s mostly played by black women. That’s supposedly the only reason some white people are now actually watching the sport and going to the games. They’re such committed white supremacists that they’re willing to subject themselves to hours of watching excruciating WNBA games, just to stick it to black women.
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This is the kind of thing that makes it very obvious the WNBA’s never going to have another decent season ever again. The moment they get some new fans, they immediately smear them as racists. And a lot of these players are doing it. The Time Magazine piece also contains this insight from another WNBA player, A’ja Wilson:
“It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug,” Wilson said. “That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”
This has become part of the mythology in women’s basketball for a long time. They seem to have convinced themselves that no one watches their games because of racism. That was the message that a UConn player named Paige Bueckers delivered at the ESPY’s a few years ago, at the height of the BLM mania. Watch:
Paige Bueckers also bent the knee when she was named the best women's college athlete. Her award speech sounded more like a hostage statement. Unfortunately, young women, even more than others, succumb to the pressure to make such statements. pic.twitter.com/YzMEUu0jYg
— Frank DeScushin (@FrankDeScushin) December 10, 2024
It’s the same script that Caitlin Clark is reading, three years later, as if nothing’s changed. Hopefully I don’t need to explain the problem here. To claim that people don’t care about black basketball players — or that black basketball players are getting swept under the rug — is to ignore the fact that out of the 100 most popular and wealthiest and most praised and adored basketball players of all time, maybe like ten of them are white. Maybe. Obviously the vast, vast majority of the greatest and most visible and most widely loved and admired basketball players of all time are black. The most marketable and marketed athlete in history, in any sport, is a black guy named Michael Jordan. This narrative wants us to pretend like none of that exists.
But things have changed. Most people aren’t willing to play that game of pretend anymore. People are no longer willing to believe that there’s a vast conspiracy to ignore the many accomplishments of black women in the WNBA. Now people are more likely to believe the truth, which is that people are ignoring the WNBA because it’s a terrible product.
If you don’t believe that, consider the overwhelmingly negative response to a message that was posted yesterday by outgoing congressman Jamaal Bowman. Bowman, of course, is best known for pulling a fire alarm and lying about it.
Here’s what he wrote on X, totally unprompted:
Dear White People, I don’t know why I feel the need to keep talking to you. I don’t know why part of me still has hope for you and for us. Some of you are too far gone. But maybe enough of you aren’t and will join us in fighting to end white supremacy.
Bowman then followed-up this open letter to “White People” by lying about the Rodney King trial and the Daniel Penny case, among others. In response, thousands of people pointed out to Jamaal Bowman that he should probably move to Liberia if he hates white people so much. Putting it mildly, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative. And then Bowman responded with this:
Wow. This has been so triggering for so many of you. Do you realize you’re actually proving my point? If you are triggered by this, imagine how I must feel when Black people are murdered consistently and there is no Justice. Y’all can’t handle a tweet. Fascinating.
Back at the height of BLM, this series of posts probably would’ve been effective. There was an appetite for this type of low-effort race baiting. But there’s no appetite for this anymore, as the response on X demonstrates.
But there are other members of Congress who will actually be returning next year who are just as committed to this anti-white orthodoxy, even though it’s well past its expiration date.
Several of them just came out and demanded that Joe Biden commute the sentences of everyone on death row, on racial grounds. Watch:
BREAKING: Democrats in Congress urge Biden to commute sentences for every convict on death row, citing racism pic.twitter.com/8ERMkjW5H3
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 10, 2024
The claim you just heard — that federal death row “disproportionately” consists of “black and brown people” — just isn’t true. Black people commit something like 50% of the murders in this country, according to FBI data. But the federal death row is only around 38% black. It’s 15% Hispanic and 45% white. So if anything, death row is “disproportionately” affecting white people.
But no one in their right mind thinks along these lines, because everyone on death row clearly deserves to be there. These are criminals — almost always repeat offenders — who have been convicted of some of the most heinous crimes, including kidnapping and murdering 12-year-old girls, executing bank guards, and shooting witnesses so they can’t testify in court. It includes a police officer in New Orleans who conspired with a drug dealer to murder a woman who filed a police brutality complaint against him. It includes a mass shooter, as well as the Boston Marathon bomber.
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These are the kind of people that Democrats have decided, after their crushing defeat in November, must be defended. Americans made it very clear that they’re unhappy with the cost of living and public safety and illegal immigration, and Democrats have responded with, “Best we can do is commute the sentences of death row inmates.” These inmates are the absolute dregs of society. But Democrats in Congress have decided to campaign on behalf of these murderers because some of them are black.
What this means is that, despite the results of last month’s election, the Left is pushing ahead with the same racial narrative we’ve seen so many times before. They are completely oblivious to the fact that no one — except apparently Caitlin Clark — is receptive to this kind of demagoguery anymore.
For her part, Caitlin Clark has endorsement deals to worry about. No one else has any incentive to tolerate it. And if there’s a reason to be bullish right now about Republicans’ prospects in future elections, it’s that Democrats — whether they’re in Congress or the WNBA — seem incapable of figuring that out.
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