It ain’t about basketball or sportsmanship

Some will continue to act as if they don’t get it, so allow me to explain.

I don’t particularly care much about sports, college or otherwise. My father happened to be a huge LSU sports fan, so kudos to the LSU women’s basketball team on their 2023 national championship on behalf of Ralph Donaldson’s daughter. Now, the social and media commentary that ensued following this predominantly Black team’s win, particularly aimed at star player Angel Reese, is bigger than basketball. That’s why my interest was peaked and why I’m speaking on it. I’m definitely not here to debate basketball.

There are people in our nation and right in our own neighborhoods and on our very own social media feeds that can’t help but show their true colors when white supremacy is threatened. We experience this ad nauseam as Black women, and always have.

Anytime a Black woman proves herself superior at anything over their white counterparts, it becomes a real problem for those who are clinging to their white supremacy for dear life. Whether it be in sports, business, politics or any other public arena, the result tends to be the same, a firestorm of bitterness, ugliness and hate. When a Black woman excels or dominates, white supremacists immediately go on the attack. And their narrative and language is very predictable and recognizable. When a Black woman dares to be the best, and they cannot attack her talent, because she’s clearly proven herself, they then predictably begin to pick her apart in any other way they can grasp at. Some of the most predictable ways tend to be bashing her looks and physical appearance, what she wears, her hair, the manner in which she speaks, her facial features and her body type. They might never say the word Black or any of the typical racial epithets most of them use amongst themselves, but they willingly use public language that lets us know exactly what they mean. This includes, but is not limited to, language like thug, ghetto, trashy, classless, disgusting, mean, the list goes on.

Again, none of this is new. In the case of LSU’s Angel Reese, they attacked her reaction to winning the National Championship over Iowa. They attacked her for her actions seemingly towards Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, who is white. They used this instance to then attack many other aspects of who the young Ms. Reese is that have absolutely nothing to do with basketball, down to even her eyelashes. Thus, again, proving what most of us Black women and Black people in America already know. And that is, don’t you dare publicly embarrass or successfully challenge a white person. Don’t you dare show pride in yourself, or celebrate yourself, or be confident in yourself while whites are watching. You are best to drop your eyes and humble yourself regardless of victory or loss. Don’t you even think about being a sassy Black woman in the face of whiteness. The purveyors of white supremacy will never stand for such.

To that, I say, fuck them, sis. As Black women, we are bombarded and lam-blasted with messages and narratives daily insisting we shrink back, that we be less, that we not live up to or display the greatness that we exhibit every day in sports, business, politics, education and just plain old life in general. Sistas, stay your course and behave in whatever manner you feel is appropriate for the situations you find yourself in. They get to make their own rules, and so do we. It’s that simple.

Furthermore, it is all of our jobs to speak up and speak out when we see this covert white supremacy/bigotry/racism/hate at play. It’s our responsibility to use our voices and platforms to back our sistas up. Whether Ms. Reece defends herself or not, I will defend her. I am a Black woman. I will defend her in the same way I’ve had to defend myself and so many other Black women in the limelight whom I will likely never meet (Michelle Obama, Serena Williams, etc.). When you’re a Black woman in America who is great at what you do, have the nerve to prove it or even celebrate it in the face of white supremacy, you will always be a problem. Just settle in, stay true to who you are and get comfortable being that problem. Let them stew and rot in their own hate. We will always have each other’s backs.