If you thought DiJonai Carrington clotheslining Sophie Cunningham, then posting “White privilege” from the locker room after her ejection, would cause the sports media to acknowledge the actual racism in the WNBA, you thought wrong.
To neutral observers, the story on Saturday is hardly difficult to analyze. Carrington committed a dirty, flagrant worthy play that could have seriously injured Cunningham, leaving her bloodied in the mouth from the contact. The officials rightfully ejected Carrington. She responded by accusing league officials of racism, an accusation that, while baseless, is nevertheless serious.
And yet, the race ladies of Threads and Bluesky have rushed to Carrington’s defense.
It appears the group chat settled on the talking point that Cunningham committed a similar foul last year and became famous for it, thus proving a racial double standard.
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“DiJonai Carrington receiving a Flagrant 2 and an ejection was the right call, but let’s go back to the play that made Sophie Cunningham famous,” Jemele Hill posted. “SC gained a million followers overnight. She is affectionately known as an enforcer. Nobody suggested she should be brought up on assault charges despite her play being clear retaliation.”
“Meanwhile DiJonai Carrington was actually going for the ball but she’s being called racial slurs, a thug, and some suggested a suspension for multiple games.”
Hill’s sidekick, the always bitter Cari Champion, posted essentially the same response while sharing Cunningham’s foul from over a year ago.
“The question is a fair ask- will @dijonai be applauded? Will she gain millions of followers and marketing opportunities?” Champion said.
“League has a race problem,” she added in a since-deleted post.
Indeed, it does.
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The comparison between Carrington’s and Cunningham’s hard fouls is not nearly as clever as the duo think. For one, Cunningham acknowledged that she deserved to be ejected. Carrington claimed she didn’t and invoked the race card.
Now, let’s revisit the foul Hill and Champion reference.
Last June, Connecticut’s Marina Mabrey shoved Caitlin Clark to the floor during a game. Jacy Sheldon then slapped Clark across the face. While the officials showed little interest in restoring order, Cunningham responded by shoving Sheldon onto the hardwood.
The moment was significant because Cunningham was the first player in the WNBA to stand up for Clark, the league’s biggest star, who is perpetually fouled hard.
Cunningham delivered a receipt for a dirty foul on her teammate. Carrington, by contrast, committed a dirty play, as she has done throughout her career. Two seasons ago, she jammed her fingernail into Clark’s eye.
Reporters asked Cunningham after the game about the comparisons between her foul and Carrington’s.
“I think the league is taking care of that,” she responded. “This has nothing to do with race. Last year, I did the same thing and I got kicked out. And I deserved to be kicked out. There’s no reason even to play that card.”
They are not the same.
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Of course, Jemele Hill and Cari Champion are not the only usual suspects in sports media trying to divert attention away from Carrington.
On Sunday, NBC host Maria Taylor anchored a discussion about the play and accused those criticizing Carrington of using it as “ammunition for a culture war.”
You might wonder how Taylor could make that argument, considering Carrington injected herself into the “culture war” by posting “White privilege” from the locker room during the game.
It would be fair to wonder.
We can explain: Taylor and NBC neglected to mention Carrington’s social media post during the segment, as if it weren’t part of the story.
ESPN took the same approach. Its WNBA halftime show – featuring the not-so-diverse cast of Monica McNutt, Andraya Carter, Chiney Ogwumike, and Malika Andrews – also downplayed Carrington’s hard foul as “accidental” while ignoring her social media post.
By pretending Carrington never mentioned “White privilege,” the WNBA media can do what it does when a Black player hard fouls Clark or Cunningham: dismiss it as “part of the game” and characterize criticism of the player as racially charged harassment.
Back on Threads, former ESPN anchor Cindy Brunson is spiraling.
She claims that DiJonai Carrington did not deserve a Flagrant 2, that Sophie Cunningham is the one who should have been ejected, and that white players in the WNBA are benefiting from “reverse DEI.”
You read all of that correctly. Brunson looked at the play above and Cunningham’s bloodied mouth and determined she was the “aggressor” who deserved to be removed from the game, not Carrington.
It’s also worth underscoring that we are publishing this piece early Monday morning. By, say, 3 p.m. ET, we suspect plenty of other racial idolaters in the media will have echoed similar commentary. Perhaps USA Today’s Nancy Armour will explain how Cunningham refusing to defend Carrington for clotheslining her could re-empower the Ku Klux Klan or such.
Put simply, many members of the sports media cannot bring themselves to cede an inch of ground in the culture war. That means never, under any circumstance, criticizing a Black woman in the WNBA in defense of a straight white woman.
The likes of Jemele Hill and Maria Taylor do not see a player committing a hard foul and then falsely blaming racism. They see a Black lesbian woman, with a history of hard-fouling Caitlin Clark, involved in a scuffle with the pretty white girl who recently voiced her support for keeping biological males out of female athletics.
That is enough for them, no matter the facts or context, to side with the Black lesbian woman and vilify the straight white one.
Facts be damned.
Likewise, Cunningham’s former teammate, Sydney Colson, endorsed the violent play, mocking Cunningham with the caption, “I love a trans foul,” on her Threads account on Saturday evening. Colson is also a Black lesbian, which seems relevant.
In sum, we are not sure there is anything a Black lesbian woman could do to Cunningham or Clark that this group would not defend. This is the definition of “racial idolatry” that sports columnist Jason Whitlock discusses.
To the women of the WNBA, analysts at ESPN, and hosts at NBC, race and identity define one’s absolute value. To them, little else matters. They will excuse virtually any aggression or wrongdoing if the person committing it has the right skin color or sexuality.
These dynamics make the WNBA difficult to support. The league is clearly consumed by athletes with bigoted, demeaning views of white women. They do not think white women belong unless they bend the knee, as many white women have done to fit in.
It’s hard to imagine this ending well. The Black women assaulting Clark and Cunningham feel no remorse. The media has convinced them they shouldn’t, that they are actually the victims.
At this rate, one of these players will seriously injure Cunningham and/or Clark. That’s obvious.
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And yet, the usual suspects in sports media will downplay it as “part of basketball” and denounce those appalled by the injury as vile racists.
No one paying attention would dispute that’s where this is heading.
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