The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Caitlin Clark

The Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark is burning up the WNBA, by being White.

Only five games into her professional basketball career, Caitlin Clark, of the Indiana Fever, is burning up the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Not with the buckets she’s scoring on the court—at least not so far in her short career—but with the buckets of endorsement cash she’s scoring from companies like Nike and State Farm.

Even before Clark’s first WNBA dribble, Nike announced they had signed Clark to a $28 million endorsement deal that includes a signature shoe—only 3 other current WNBA players have shoe deals, and none like Clark’s. And while Clark is raking in the green, many of her WNBA competitors are seeing another kind of green—as in envy.

While Clark had a colorful collegiate career, she’s the all-time scoring leader in the history of NCAA basketball—women’s or men’s—and became famous for her near halfcourt three-point shots, pinpoint passes, and for leading Iowa to the NCAA Women’s National Championship game two years in a row, some prefer to see her only in terms of black or white.

There’s nothing outwardly controversial about Clark—except, apparently, that she’s White. In fact, she might be the only person in America who’s whiter than me. And while once it was her basketball skills that drew attention from competitors, the media, and fans—it’s her whiteness that’s drawing attention now.

“Only dereliction about the role of race in sport,” wrote Kevin Blackistone, columnist for the Washington Post and frequent ESPN personality, “could lead anyone to downplay it in Clark’s ascendancy, no matter her accomplishments.” According to Blackistone, what truly catapulted Clark, “an austere representative of great White Midwestern values,” to national prominence and as “bankable star,” was her “showdown” with LSU star Angel Reese, “an exemplar of everything that is Black urban aesthetics” in the 2023 National Championship game.

Those who watched that Iowa-LSU game, or paid attention to the media frenzy that followed, might remember Reese, who is Black, taunting and mocking Clark after LSU beat Iowa for the national championship in 2023. The public response, many argued, had racial overtones.  “Clark was venerated for not responding,” Blackistone observed, “Reese was villainized.”

“[T]he attention and riches showered on Clark,” writes Kevin Baxter in the LA Times, “who has played only three professional games, has fueled some bitterness” among Black WNBA players. “A lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is," Las Vegas forward A’ja Wilson, a two-time WNBA MVP, told the Associated Press. The Atlantic columnist and former ESPN contributor Jemele Hill told Baxter, "We would all be very naive if we didn’t say race and her sexuality played a role in her popularity."

The reason that the WNBA hasn’t enjoyed the same success as the NBA, as well as for Clark’s celebrity, writes Baxter, is that the WNBA is “a league in which approximately 70% of the players are Black, nearly a third identify as LGBTQ and most come from urban environments.” Clark, he observes, “is white, straight and from Iowa.”

But even among some women athletes there’s an element of racial resentment at play when it comes to the WNBA vis a vis other women’s sports. Contrasting the appeal of women’s soccer to women’s basketball, Sue Bird (no relation to Larry), a former WNBA star, who is White, told The Hill back in 2020, “And to be blunt it’s the demographic of who’s playing. Women’s soccer players generally are cute little White girls while WNBA players, we are all shapes and sizes…a lot of Black, gay, tall women…there is maybe an intimidation factor and people are quick to judge it and put it down.”

Is the shoe on the wrong foot?

But wait, you could say almost the same about the NBA, except for a third identifying as LGBTQ. I can’t think of one White player, with the possible exception of the long-retired Larry Bird (no relation to Sue), who can match the marketing exposure of Michael Jordan, Shaq, Steph Curry, Lebron James, or Charles Barkley—all of whom, the last time I looked, are black. You can’t watch TV without seeing Shaq, for example, pitch for Home Depot, The General Insurance, or Icy Hot. Can you name even one white, current, NBA star who is a recognizable national TV pitchman—I can’t.

According to USA Today, 12 WNBA players have received “shoe” deals (though none as lucrative as Clark’s), including Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley (the current coach of the NCAA Women’s national champion University of South Carolina), Cynthia Cooper, Nikki McCray, Chamique Holdsclaw, and Candace Parker—all of whom are black.

But the bottom line is, in fact, the bottom line. Sports is entertainment. And if people aren’t entertained, they won’t watch. Companies like Nike aren’t in the business of giving money away, and when they make an investment like a shoe deal, they expect a return on their investment. The truth is that the WNBA has struggled to find a larger audience and to compete with the NBA, perhaps—with the emergence of Clark— until now.

Does the WNBA have a “W” problem?

The Atlantic ran an interesting piece almost 10 years ago now, comparing reactions to two stories it published that looked at “the differences that female soccer players face compared to their male counterparts.” The more controversial—in terms of reader comments—of the two was written by Maggie Mertens, claiming that the lack of popularity of many women’s sports was a “feminist issue,” and that men’s sports seem more interesting because, among other reasons, they are packaged with “higher production value” and “higher quality commentary.”

But many of those commenting on Mertens’ piece offered a different perspective. A common theme among them being that men’s physical advantages, especially in some team sports, like basketball, make women’s basketball less exciting. Women’s basketball is played very much in the style of men’s—except slower and lower.

“Women’s sports that are identical to men’s sports—soccer and basketball, for example—will never be popular,” one representative commenter wrote, “because men are faster, stronger and more athletic. On the other hand, sports that highlight the different strengths of female athletes—tennis, gymnastics, ice skating—are popular. None of those are team sports, so there may be something there.”

“The fact is a lot of men don't want to watch the WNBA because they think it's boring,” Lyndsey D'Arcangelo wrote in the Huffington Post back in 2016, way before the Caitlin Clark era. “How do I know?,” she wrote, “I've asked. They are used to high-flying dunks and blocks and fast-paced wheeling and dealing on the court. That's what they want in a basketball game.”

The real issue, according to D’Arcangelo, is that the “WNBA, and women's sports in general, need more women to care. Notice I didn't just say women. I said more women. The WNBA's audience is 75 percent women. But those 75 percent make up a small fraction of the population. We need more women to read, watch, and soak up women's sports the same way men do men's sports.”

You don’t bring me flowers…

Both Blackistone and Jemelle Hill suggest an alternative explanation for Clark’s popularity and commercial appeal. It’s based, they believe—at least in part, maybe even in large part—on overt, or covert, racism. Blackistone analogizes Clark as the WNBA’s “Great White Hope,” symbolic of white supremacy. Hill chides our naivete if we don’t see that some of Clark’s fame is rooted in her whiteness.

But Clark has her fans in the Black community. "To have her reduced that way bothered me a lot because this is her record," Whoppi Goldberg said on The View, in response to Hill’s comments about Clark’s popularity. "Unless you can show me who’s got a better record than this, this is why she’s getting the attention she’s getting, because she’s a damn good player."

On his podcast with former NBA player J.J. Redick, Lebron James leapt to Clark’s defense, "Don't get it twisted. Don't get it [expletive] up. Caitlin Clark is the reason why a lot of great things is going to happen for the WNBA...I'm rooting for Caitlin because I've been in that seat before. I've walked that road before."

But perhaps no one can say it better, or with more unique panache—though I can’t say I would have the guts to say it exactly the same way, or gotten away with it—than Charles Barkley. During TNT’s NBA Tip Off program on Wednesday, Barkley scolded the WNBA players who have been critical of Clark’s notoriety. “Lebron, you’re 100 percent right on these girls hatin’ on Caitlin Clark, y’all petty girls,” he said, “Y’all should be thanking that girl…what’s she’s accomplished, give her her flowers…Caitlin Clark, thank you for bringing all that money and shine to the WNBA."

Kevin, Jamelle—are you listening?