LSU’s victory is being unnecessarily politicized

What a week for women’s college basketball. The highest-rated Final Four ever was capped off with a fiercely competitive final game between Louisiana State University (LSU) and the University of Iowa. LSU, led by Angel Reese and Alexis Morris, emphatically triumphed over Iowa and their star Caitlin Clark by a final score of 102-85. It was a fitting capstone to what had been an entertaining and dramatic tournament. This ought to be a moment to celebrate women’s athletic excellence and the growing popularity of the sport.

And yet, discourse surrounding the game has become more complicated than that. In the immediate aftermath of the game, Reese gleefully celebrated her win by seeking out Clark, pointing to her finger (soon to be adorned with a championship ring), and by imitating a taunting gesture that Clark had used in a previous win. Some (mostly white users) on Twitter exploded in rage, calling Reese’s taunts “class-less” and unsportsmanlike. That Reese is Black and Clark is white added to the back-and-forth. Where was this outrage over taunting behavior, many African American journalists and athletes wondered, when Clark taunted black and white players in previous games? Why was Reese being targeted in ways that Clark had not?

First lady Jill Biden only added fuel to the fire by suggesting that both LSU and Iowa be invited to the White House (eschewing the tradition that only the winning team receives that honor). In praising the Iowa team for their play and in explaining that celebrating both the winning and losing teams was “good sportsmanship.” In doing so, Biden seemed to validate the criticisms of Reese and to go out of her way to celebrate the mostly white roster of Iowa.

Reese tweeted, “A JOKE!” in response to Biden’s idea. Morris similarly expressed her opposition and suggested LSU instead celebrate their will with former first lady Michelle Obama. 

Sports are never free from politics (despite many fans’ wishes that they were) and the negative reactions to Reese’s postgame demonstrations, Biden’s bizarre decision to invite the losing team and the vigorous back-and-forth on social media about what it all means, reveal how sports contests are often sites to engage with important social issues. Those accusing some white fans and media members of having a double standard have a point: where were the complaints when Clark, in the middle of game, backed away on defense from an opposing player on South Carolina and waved her hand dismissively, essentially taunting the player’s inability to shoot the ball from a distance? It seems clear that race matters here — white women engaging in taunting are “competitive” and “having fun,” but a black woman doing something similar is “classless” and “unsportsmanlike.”

And there are deeper roots here, tying together the realities of race, class and gender. In her postgame press conference, Reese indicated that she faced criticisms because she was “too hood” and “too ghetto.” It calls to mind journalist William Rhoden’s analysis of the University of Miami’s dominant football teams of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many white fans and media members appeared to loathe the Miami players, many of whom came from impoverished circumstances, for their trash-talking and demonstrative behaviors during the games and on the sidelines. But Rhoden defended them. White fans and coaches were willing to use black athletic ability, according to Rhoden, but didn’t want to deal with the real challenges black athletes had to go through in their daily lives. Rhoden’s view was that Black athletes, such as the Miami football players, came to school “with their own baggage, baggage that a history of living in a white supremacist country had helped to pack.”Their trash talking, their style of play “developed in response to quotas and denial of black humanity.”

Reese’s press conference, and her critiques of the assembled media for trying to make her “fit in a box,” echo a similar idea.

Biden’s decision to invite the Iowa team, given all of this complexity and controversy, seems, at best, oblivious, and, at worst, another sign of the preferential treatment given to white women. Let’s hope she does the right thing by celebrating LSU at the White House, congratulating Iowa from afar, and working harder to validate black women’s athletic and academic accomplishments. Doing so would be a worthy end to a wonderful college basketball season and tournament.

Gregory Kaliss, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history at York College of Pennsylvania and author of “Beyond the Black Power Salute: Athlete Activism in an Era of Change.”