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In January LSU’s Angel Reese tweeted one thing that will nearly show prescient, and got here into play months later when the Tigers would beat Iowa for the ladies’s nationwide championship.
“I’m very Hood. I’m very Jewish,” she tweeted. “I don’t fit the narrative and I’m okay with that. I’m from Baltimore where you hoop out and do shit. If it was a guy you wouldn’t be calling a nun at all. Let’s normalize the performance of women.” ” Instead of being ’embarrassing’ the passion for the game.
As someone who played a lot of (bad) basketball all over Baltimore in high school, it rings true. But at the same time, in pickup games anywhere in the country, everybody talks nonsense: black, white, Latino, Asian, Vulcan, Klingon, Everyone.
Months later, after winning the championship game on Sunday night, Reese doubled up, and appropriately added the explosive primitive molecule of the race, one of the finest moments of a remarkable tournament, and an example of Black fearlessness and strength. .
More:Finally! LSU-Iowa drama shows women’s sports are generating petty arguments just like men’s
“I do not match the story. I do not match the field you guys wish to put me in,” she said after the game Sunday night. “‘I am too hood. I am too ghetto.’ That is what you all stated to me all yr. When different folks do that, you do not say something. It was for individuals who seem like me.”
To be clear, when Reese says “different folks” she means white folks. And he is proper about that double standard.
This was trending throughout the tournament when it came to Kaitlin Clark, one of the most talented and entertaining players in the history of college basketball. Clarke is a skilled trash talker and used John Cena’s “You may’t see me” taunt several times throughout the tournament. In the closing moments of the championship game, Reese made the same taunt and pointed to his hand indicating he was receiving the championship ring.
True to the fact that Reese went after Clarke in taunts to further the idle talk, the action still didn’t come close to justifying the massive amount of vitriol on social media. The situation seemed divided by race, with many black people (not all) defending Reese, and many white people (not all) criticizing him.
To show how big a story it became, how it divided along racial lines, after a famous white former sports broadcaster called Reese an “(expletive) fool”, actor Samuel L. followers tweeted a spirited defense of Reese. which cannot be printed here. LeBron James also endorsed Reese.
This game, and other moments in the women’s tournament, as great as it was, as magical as it was for LSU, also exposed some long, ugly stereotypes about black men who refuse to die. The conventions are as follows:
When black players are aggressive, and talk nonsense, they are thugs and brutes.
When white players are aggressive, and talk nonsense, they are passionate and furious.
This stereotype goes back decades. Larry Bird was the biggest trash talker of all time but was celebrated for his passion. Tom Brady yelled at teammates and coaches and was seen to be infuriated. John Thompson’s Georgetown Hoyas, who played defense and gusto, were called thugs. Fighting is seen as a tradition in hockey. Battle is seen as cool and spirited in NASCAR. Fights at NBA games leave white commentators asking: “The place’s the dad?”
One of the reasons so many black athletes came to Reese’s defense is because so many have seen and faced this double standard themselves.
Washington Mystics player Natasha Cloud tweeted: “That is the place we’d like our allies. I’d love for our white counterparts to step ahead and name the sport what it’s. We white for the sport.” And there’s a difference in how we view the passion of black players.”
“White players are ‘passionate’ and ‘competitive.’ Black players are ‘classless thugs.’ It is this reckless narrative that continues to divide us,” she stated.
South Carolina coach Don Staley, following the group’s Last 4 loss to Iowa, talked about preventing the stereotype that his group is sluggish as a result of they play with physicality. The language utilized by some to explain them is reminiscent of what was as soon as stated about Thompson’s Hoyas.
“We’re not bar fighters. We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters,” Staley stated. “I think it’s brought into play sometimes, and it hurts.”
Once more, these stereotypes are highly effective and refuse to die. They’re dinosaurs of racism however not extinct.
Writer and faculty professor David J. Leonard writes about whitewashing in sports activities tradition within the e-book Enjoying When White: Privilege and Energy on and Off the Area.
“To be a white athlete is to be a scrappy and gritty athlete whose motor never quits, whose ‘drive never relents’ and whose determination is unmatched,” He wrote for The Undefeated in an adaptation of his book. “To be a white athlete is to ‘play the right way’, to be unselfish, without ego, and to always put winning and the team first. Such racially stratified descriptors are common in the sports media, and from coaches, general managers, and fans. Equal to. As hard work and intelligence are continually attributed to white athletes, whose IQ, work ethic, and intangibles are sources of constant celebration. To be a white athlete is to be a brain, a student of the game, a man for a different era. Throwback
“The ability of whiteness is equally evident within the trash speak of John Stockton, Larry Chicken, Brady, and (Johnny) Manzil. Amidst widespread indifference to better sportsmanship and respect for sports activities, hip-hop and black athletes have been compelled to infiltrate.” Because of toxic values, white athletes’ trash-talking is either ignored or celebrated as evidence of their passion for sports and competition.”
Extra:Caitlin Clark’s influence on Iowa and girls’s sports activities is immense — and she or he’s simply getting began
Clarke is one of the crown jewels of faculty basketball and she’s going to speak her trash and wave her arm, as she ought to. She will again up the speak with lovely drama.
There shall be black gamers who may also do their very own shit. Hopefully the standard they maintain themselves to isn’t any totally different from Clarke’s.
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