Is Caitlin Clark Atoning or Bragging?
What's with Clark giving her most brash interview while checking her privilege?
Following sports media coverage of Caitlin Clark’s WNBA feels almost like slipping into a parallel universe of the very recent past. We are visiting Earth 2, where Parag Agrawal still runs Twitter, Robin DiAngelo is the nation’s leading intellectual, and our media discourse revolves around the census categories of celebrities.
After months of rhetorical pressure, Caitlin Clark is telling a loud Earth 2 cohort exactly what they’ve demanded she say. Some of the spiel is preposterous in a, “She knows we know she’s lying” sort of way. Maybe she believes other aspects. It’s difficult to know exactly, given that we don’t actually know her.
In a much discussed article, Clark’s general “aw shucks” persona gives way to a more specific deference: Her acknowledgement of responsibility on account of benefitting from White privilege. Clark had been embraced by a lot of conservatives just by not saying much within a WNBA that’s explicitly progressive. Publications like Outkick supported Clark when it looked as though other players were resentfully targeting her, both physically and rhetorically. She stoically stayed away from this discourse, attempting the radical feat of just letting all sides enjoy her rise to stardom.
The loud conversation never changed, though. Conservatives saw her as a wronged martyr, singled out for being White and straight. WNBA progressives saw her as someone who not only benefitted from being White and straight, but also had drawn in all these bigoted fans who loved her for that reason. In the meantime, non ideological people just enjoyed her great rookie season because it was inherently compelling.
This week, Caitlin Clark was named Time Magazine Athlete of the Year, an occasion that led to these new quotes from her about the WNBA. The statements, which mirror a lot of cultural WNBA orthodoxy about one’s need to atone for White privilege to uplift Black women, can be construed as a phase shift in her public relations. It’s the only time I’ve seen the Red America Approved superstar get criticized from the right, at least. Here’s one of the viral quotes: