Racial Anxiety In Sport

Not so fast, honey.

The WNBA has never been more topical than it is right now (which is a traditionally low bar, I’ll admit) but you have to take the spotlight whenever you can get it.

A fledgling league needs star power to succeed and the WNBA certainly added that when Caitlin Clark was drafted first overall by the Indiana Fever. In a perfect world, adding a generational talent like Clark would be heralded as a good thing, but we don’t live in a perfect world and the reaction to her becoming the new face of the league has run the emotional gamut.

WNBA players, in general, have ended up either envying or resenting her, while fans of the league see Clark as either a basketball messiah or a spoiled little white girl. She may or may not be spoiled but she certainly is little and white and don't be fooled into thinking race isn’t a big part of this story (although I don’t think it’s actually as big a deal as people want to believe it is).

Clark is really good at basketball. She is the highest scoring player - man or woman - in NCAA history, so she comes with great basketball pedigree, although that talent has never been in doubt. What bothers some people more, is the fact that she was given the crown before ever having set foot on an WNBA floor.

Of course, celebrating unproven talent is nothing new in sports, especially when companies like Nike, State Farm and Gatorade are part of the hype process. What is particularly different, and difficult, in this instance, is that a tiny white girl has been fast tracked to superstar status in a sport often perceived as a black sport. I don't say this to sensationalize the issue, I say this to clarify it. The general reactions we're seeing are part animosity, part jealousy and part pain.

At the same time Clark is becoming the new face of the WNBA, the NBA is grappling with a similar struggle. In a sport where almost three quarters of the players are black, arguably two of the three best players in the league right now are white Europeans. Making matters “worse” is the fact that Nikola Jokic, a white Serbian, in 2024 won his third NBA MVP Trophy in the last four years.

(C) Statista 2024

There is some real concern, and with it, some irrational fear within the black community, that they’re losing “their” game. These concerns are not unfounded, although the anxiety resulting from this hysteria certainly is.

People with bigger issues to push - namely those with fundamentally-biased views - have capitalized on this "controversy" to push their racial agendas. That includes black people who are not adjusting well to these new challenges as well as the reflexive white nationalists we've come to expect when a golden opportunity to air their grievances arrives.

At one time, the game of basketball was actually a white collegiate sport that eventually, through integration, literally raised itself to new heights with the inclusion of African Americans. While one side celebrated its newfound influence on a game, the other side lamented the loss of its stranglehold over the sport and its eroding racial purity. In effect, a group of people with essentially the same colour of skin were "losing our game."

It’s now happening, but in reverse. The status quo of what the game of basketball today, is under threat by unprecedented and unforeseen circumstances. In this instance, that would be the ascendance of Europeans (some of which are Caucasian) and tiny white girls. For some, this is akin to a five alarm fire while, for others, it's simply the tide's shifting back a little more towards the middle.

The good news is that this isn’t really bad news at all. The issue is not one of hyperbolic racism or cronyism or favouritism or even underserved entitlement. It’s not really even a crisis at all. Rather it’s a tidal shift and a fundamental challenge, although rest assured, this isn’t the first time a group of people - either defined by race or nationality - have felt a loss of identity by losing their traditional grip on a sport which defines them as a people.

Canada and hockey, for example, have been synonymous since the game was first invented, but, starting in the 1970s, the country faced a series of existential crises from foreign adversaries like Russia, Sweden, Finland and the United States. These were countries dead set on wresting away their own piece of Canada’s game and wrest away they did.

Russia would put a real scare into Canadian hockey in 1972 when they narrowly lost a series to Canada and in subsequent years, they would be joined by a bevy of other nations who would force Canada to recalibrate its relationship with its cherished game of hockey.

While the sport today is still predominantly Canadian (as far as the dominant nationality of the players in the game goes) the challenge put forth by other nations was eventually looked at as more an opportunity for Canadians to rededicate their efforts to a game they loved than as an effort to erode Canada’s influence on the game.

Along with national identity crisis in Canada, the game of hockey was also forced to grapple with its historical identity of being mainly a white man’s game which, admittedly, has not been a smooth transition. The NHL has been forced to deal with its own steeped resistance to the same type of racial invasion "threat" we're seeing now with the NBA and the WNBA.

Sport, by nature, is very tribal and that inherent fear of outsiders extends to anything, whether it's region, nationality, or race, and when that anxiety spikes, it's not hard to find a precedent that exists to not only assuage those fears but also one that can help guide the lost, the fearful and the bewildered.

Those who find themselves under unexpected duress might find it comforting to know that it’s a very human frailty to feel fear whenever the status quo is being challenged, regardless of the circumstances and in the end, overwrought hard posturing, drawn along racial lines for something as relatively-insignificant as a game, ends up looking petty, trivial and unnecessary.

It is just a game after all.

This is The End.