- Angel Reese of the LSU Tigers faced scrutiny after trolling her rival during a recent match.
- Some called her "classless" for trolling her rival during the national championship.
LSU Tigers heavyweight Angel Reese calling out unfair criticism of her behavior during the NCAA women's basketball championship final is "a testament to her authenticity" as Black women in sports are often viewed in a different light, an expert told Insider.
"It highlighted the ways in which race still is very much a part of the interpretations and narratives for Black women in sport," Dr. Ketra Armstrong, Director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity in Sports at the University of Michigan, told Insider. "We know that trash-talking, particularly in the heat of the moment and expressing your emotions, that's part of the game in general. "
Reese was met with rash criticism for trolling Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark during the championship final on April 2 in Dallas this month, which prompted an avalanche of commentary on social media.
During the game, Reese did the John Cena "You Can't See Me" hand gesture against Clark, who notably has used it as well, and in contrast, people praised her for her competitiveness. Social media exploded labeling Reese "classless" and "a fucking idiot," among other jabs.
—ESPN (@espn) April 2, 2023
During a press conference early last week, after securing the chip, the Baltimore native rightfully responded to her critics and pushed back against the overwhelming backlash she said she received throughout the season.
"I'm too hood, I'm too ghetto. Y'all told me that all year. But when other people do it, y'all don't say nothing. So this is for the girls that look like me," Reese said. "That's going to speak up for what they believe in.""This was bigger than me," she continued. "Twitter is going to go on a rage every single time. I'm happy. I feel like I helped grow women's basketball this year."
In an appearance on Sportscenter, Clark uplifted Reese as a tremendous player and disagreed with the criticism.
"I don't think Angel should be criticized at all," Clark said. "I'm just one that competes, and she competed. I think everybody knew there was going to be a little trash talk in the entire tournament. It's not just me and Angel."
The backlash she received is not an isolated occurrence.
'They're held to a different standard'
Reese, like many Black women athletes, has had to overcome an overwhelming amount of criticism compared to their counterparts, Armstrong said.
"For too long Black women and women of color in general, but Black women have had to sort of conform to the norm so that they can belong in a space to make other people comfortable with them," Armstrong said. "And I think we're just in an era and an age where this generation of athletes is saying, 'This is who I am and love me or leave me.'"
She added, "And I love that [Reese] is taking ownership of who she is and and what her purpose is in her own way."
—MrsBundrige (@MrsBundrige) April 3, 2023
Traditional media and social platforms play a role in the perception of Black athletes, Armstrong said. For instance, she noted an incident where late radio host Don Imus used a racist slur against the predominantly Black Rutgers University basketball team, calling them"nappy-headed hos" after a national champion defeat in 2007.
Serena Williams, widely considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, has also been the subject of racist attacks in the media throughout her groundbreaking career. In one instance, a Romanian television host in 2019 dubbed the tennis star "a monkey" — a long-held racist trope for African Americans.
One of sports' rising and most electric athletes, sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson, has spoken out about the public scrutiny she's faced following news that she was suspended from the US Olympic team in 2021 after testing positive for marijuana, Insider previously reported.
She later called out a double standard after Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was given the green light to compete in the Bejing Olympics after she tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned substance, which her lawyers argued was a mix-up.
The International Olympic Committee opposed Richardson's claim, saying that "there isn't a great deal of similarity between the cases."
"If you take away the 'Black' in front of the 'woman' and another woman reacts the same way, it's not considered as 'sassy,'...[or] 'aggressive,'" Richardson told Teen Vogue last year, adding "I'm going to stand in who I am at the end of the day. I'm not going to change that."
—Sha’Carri Richardson (@itskerrii) February 14, 2022
"When Black women bring their authentic Blackness to these arenas, to these spaces, they're held to a different standard, and they're expected to conform to a norm that doesn't always celebrate the brashness of Blackness that many of these women are showing up with and proudly conveying in many different ways," Armstrong said.
"What Angel is experiencing right now is it's not really unique to her. Black women have experienced this in a lot of different ways."
After the championship earlier this month, First Lady Jill Biden extended an invite to both LSU Tigers and the Iowa Buckeyes to the White House, which she eventually walked back after criticism.
Reese opened up about how she felt about FLOTUS' apology, and although she quipped about visiting the Obamas instead, she announced that she will go to Washington, DC with her team to celebrate their win.
"I think it's a testament to her authenticity and who she is and what makes her unique and her style and her flare is that she has more name, image, and likeness deals than any basketball player, male or female," Armstrong said about Reese speaking up for herself against critics.
"Representation matters, that's the bottom line. Angel is showing that representation can take a lot of shade. It can have a lot of flavor, it can have a lot of different styles, and that's okay."