Angel Reese, the LSU Women's Basketball Team, and Why America's Attempt to Separate Race and Sports has Always Been BS.

The LSU Women's basketball team made school history by winning the college national championship. And afterwards, folks on social media demonized them for not being "gracious" winners.

LSU star forward, Angel Reese, speaks to the press after the Lady Tigers won the Women’s College basketball championship; Photo credit: Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images

There is often a convenient lie that American sports fans (mostly white ones) tell themselves about sports being race-neutral. The idea that scoreboards and trophies and banners don’t see color is prevalent among these fans when their teams are in the winner’s circle, and particularly when athletes of color exemplify modesty or graciousness, and keep their heads down while “doing the work” to obtain the victory.

But whenever these fans are on the losing end of an anticipated championship, or whenever a Black athlete, specifically, does anything other than “graciously” win, the element of race magically appears in the cultural discourse around sports at all levels.

And in the aftermath of the Lousiana State University (LSU) Lady Tigers winning the school’s first-ever college basketball championship against the University of Iowa, conversations around race, respectability and sportsmanship have checked back into the line-up.

Before the Iowa women’s basketball team advanced to the title game to face LSU, they had to go through the previously undefeated and defending national champions the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team in a hotly contested Final Four semifinals. South Carolina, coached by basketball Hall of Famer, Dawn Staley, has had their style of play compared to “a bar fight,” and critiqued by opponents for being “too physical” and “aggressive.”

Here, it should be noted that most of South Carolina’s players along with their coach, is Black.

One of the bigger eyesore moments in their Final Four matchup against Iowa, was when Iowa star and collegiate national player of the year, Caitlyn Clark waved off guarding South Carolina’s Raven Johnson’s 3-point shot. Caitlin, who apparently thought Raven didn’t have the “fundamentals” as a perimeter threat, disrespectfully backed away from a player on an undefeated team in front of a nationally televised audience.

Maybe Caitlin just looked at Raven as a mediocre player on a team with color-braided “brutes” that kept getting lucky, despite the fact that prior to their loss against Iowa, South Carolina had won 36 games dating back to last spring.

But, I digress.

Iowa’s Caitlin Clark literally shooing away South Carolina’s Raven Johnson's 3-point attempt; Photo via ESPN