Two things happened on April 2 that piqued this non-sports-fanatic’s curiosity.
First, the Louisiana State University (LSU) women’s basketball team clinched a historic national championship win, which is dope because my pops is a Louisiana-born boy whose big sister lives up the road in Baton Rouge. And my niece once played for that same team.
The second thing was LSU small forward Angel Reese, and the reason she’s dominating headlines and Twitter trends that, unfortunately, have nothing to do with the Tigers’ win.
During the fourth quarter of the championship game against the Iowa Hawkeyes, Reese made a hand gesture pointing at her ring finger directed toward Caitlyn Clark, the Hawkeyes point guard whose phenom status has singlehandedly brought more attention to women’s college basketball than its experienced in a while.
The “you can’t see me” hand gesture, originated by rapper Tony Yayo and was later popularized by WWE star John Cena, was used by Clark earlier in the tournament. Reese then pointed to her ring finger in a bout of prescient, nonverbal trash-talking, indicating that she was going home with that championship ring. No physical contact or obscene gestures — just good old-fashioned taunting that their male peers have been doing since sports were sports.
Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the unwashed Twitter denizens from fomenting their hot, musty takes. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy called Reese a “classless piece of shit.” Keith Olbermann, who is a full 43 years older than Reese, called Reese a “fucking idiot.” Which is like a porcupine calling a rose bush “spiny.” (He has since “apologized,” if you want to call it that.)
No doubt there’s the patriarchal double standard at play regarding many folks’ belief that women in sports should just shut up and dribble. But there’s also that painfully obvious sentiment that Black women in sports are scrutinized more than their white counterparts.
Our dubious history of placing a magnifying glass over successful Black women athletes in a manner we don’t reserve for others dates back to the late Florence Griffith-Joyner, who smashed so many track and field records in the late 1980s— and did so with style — that she simply had to be doping, though she never tested positive.
Fortunately for her, FloJo didn’t have to deal with social media hot takes. However, when Serena Williams, arguably the greatest tennis player of all time, broke a racket out of frustration in the 2018 U.S. Open finals against Naomi Osaka, it was open season on her in a manner that suggested she didn’t deserve to be the best. Then, of course, there’s also that ridiculously offensive cartoon with Williams looking like a linebacker golliwog.
When track and field sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, who made headlines in 2021 for kicking ass, was temporarily sidelined after testing positive for cannabis, Twitter was a full-blown mess of a (very thinly) coded racist language that suggested that she didn’t deserve the accolades she earned justly. Her long weave, big eyelashes and tattoos were weaponized against her.
In contrast, Clark, basketball’s Great White Hope, has also made the Cena gesture in competition, and no one bats an eye. Her competitive nature and trash talk are so pervasive that ESPN cut a “fun” video. Imagine, if you will, a similar video about Reese in a world where Black “aggression” comes off as a threat to everyone.
(Also, imagine Jill Biden extending a White House invite to the losing team if the Tigers were that team.)
The irony of my participating in this din aside, headlines shouldn’t focus on Reese’s innocuous hand gesture but on the fact that NCAA women’s basketball is breaking records and that more people cared about Sunday’s game than anything happening on the boys’ side during March Madness. It matters far more than the Tigers-Hawkeyes matchup — in which we got to see the best players in a league go head up — is a sports fan’s wet dream.
But, because Twitter does what it does, everyone wanted to know what Reese thought of the criticism of her gesture during a postgame conference. And she let everyone know exactly what time it is.
“All year, I was critiqued for who I was. I don’t fit the narrative,” she said. “I don’t fit the box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. I’m too ghetto. Y’all told me that all year. But when other people do it, and y’all don’t say nothing.
“So, this is for the girls that look like me. For those that want to speak up for what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you. And that’s what I did it for tonight. It was bigger than me tonight. And Twitter is going to go into a rage every time.”
Clark could’ve been petty about Reese’s taunts and joined the parade of criticism, but her pre-game conference statements suggest that she recognizes that people need to remove the sticks from their nether regions and acknowledge that (gasp!) women athletes can do what the men have been doing for years.
“More than anything, People are starting to understand that women can play with excitement and passion and a fire about themselves,” Clark said. “That’s what’s fun… that’s what people wanna see. But you leave it on the court. When you step off, you’re friends… you support one another.”
Hear that, Olbermann and all the other stodgy old white men bitching about “professionalism?” These two talented young ladies, one barely old enough to drink legally, are schooling all of you on how this athletics thing works. Pay attention.