In a shocking twist no one saw coming, Jemele Hill believes she has found racism.
In a recent interview with Uproxx, Hill discussed the exploits of Caitlin Clark, the greatest female college basketball player. While Hill acknowledges Clark’s prowess on the floor, she believes the Hawkeye star has received more coverage because she’s white.
“Everything about this sport has been trending up for years now. It did not just start with Caitlin Clark,” Hill said.
“A study I cited recently for a piece I wrote in The Atlantic [found that] when you compare [the coverage] of, say, someone like (Paige) Bueckers, Sabrina Ionescu, or Caitlin Clark to A’ja Wilson, who has dominated basketball at every single level. She’s probably the best player in the world right now. And I’m not trying to act like she gets no coverage, but the coverage that sometimes non-white women get, or specifically Black women get, is not even close. It’s two-to-one.”
Caitlin Clark, #22 of the Iowa Hawkeyes, reacts during the fourth quarter of the game against the Colorado Buffaloes in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament at Climate Pledge Arena on March 24, 2023, in Seattle, Washington. (Alika Jenner/Getty Images)
Hill then brought up the example of Aliyah Boston, a black women’s basketball player who played for South Carolina.
“I mean, Aliyah Boston was the best player in college just a couple of years ago. And she did not get even a 10th of this media coverage that Caitlin Clark did. Now, some people would say, “Oh, it’s her game.” But I don’t think it was that. She’s tremendous on television, and I’m thinking, What a missed opportunity for the national media to really elevate who she was as a person. Caitlin Clark seems to be a great personality, but it is not like Caitlin Clark is walking around saying crazy stuff. They’re just covering her excellence, and that’s good enough. Whereas it feels like for Black athletes to get the same amount of coverage or even fair coverage, there has to be something extra.”
Jemele Hill speaks at the 2019 ESSENCE Festival Presented By Coca-Cola at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on July 05, 2019, in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images for ESSENCE)
It’s unclear how much women’s college basketball was trending up before Caitlin Clark’s emergence on the national stage. What is clear is that there is no shortage of bitterness about Clark’s success.
Earlier this month, Lindsay Schnell wrote in USA Today, “Women’s basketball needs faces of the future to be black.”
