When I was a kid, it seemed instinctual to root for professional sports players who looked like me. By “looked like me,” I mean, of course, the exact same thing people of other races say when they communicate that they want to see people who look like them represented in one area or another. You may or may not believe one should even prefer to see representation of one’s particular group in any endeavor in today’s multi-racial and multi-ethnic United States, or any Western country for that matter, but it’s hard to deny that the inclination seems to come naturally.
And why not? We are, after all, a tribal species. While we should certainly look to curb any destructive tendencies that might come with that, we also will never be able to quash it entirely. An Asian American will naturally gravitate toward following other Asian Americans in entertainment, sports, and culture, particularly if there have been few to follow before. Same with any other race or ethnic group. If it creates interest and healthy competition, what’s the problem? You can never stamp out human nature, as much as many idealists on both the right and the left would like to try.
In the 80’s, the decade of my formative years, many if not most professional sports, particularly football and basketball, were already dominated by black Americans. Despite the blatant unfairness of their exclusion before I was born, I never once heard anybody claim that their later overrepresentation was due to any sort of affirmative action. In fact, sports being one of the few refreshing areas of American life where participants actually rose in pay and prominence due to raw performance and nothing else, it was always assumed that the reason black people did better in general was because more of them tended to be more athletically gifted in the areas that were important to being good in those sports. And it wasn’t a problem, at all.
Still, when a white player did well, I couldn’t help but take notice. Larry Bird was my favorite basketball player growing up, not only because he was good, but because he was white like me. And while I enjoyed seeing white NFL quarterbacks like John Elway and Joe Montana light it up, seeing a white running back or wide receiver doing well was always especially fun because those were areas where white success was rare.
If you have been affected by decades of anti-white leftist brainwashing, you might be feeling a bit uncomfortable at this point. But, would you react similarly if I were, say, a black writer writing about how I enjoyed watching fellow black people do well in sports? You know the answer. Why is every other racial group except white people allowed to have such preferences?
When Tiger Woods burst onto the professional golf scene with a dominating Masters victory in 1997, the media couldn’t stop talking about his racial identity and the inspiration his dominance of the sport would have for young black men who might like to take up the game of golf. Woods was an incredible golfer in his own right, but try and find any coverage about him in those early years that didn’t obsess about his race. In a 2020 Black History Month article on Woods, TIME called that ‘97 victory “one of sport’s most significant ever” solely on the basis of his ancestry.
It would have been one thing, obviously, if Woods had been a trailblazer on par with baseball’s Jackie Robinson, tennis’ Althea Gibson, or football’s Kenny Washington. Those stars had to contend with and overcome real entrenched barriers and overt hatred and discrimination to rise to stardom. No, there were professional golfers before Woods, and by the 90’s race hatred in the country had long faded into obscurity. The difference? None had dominated the sport like he did. The media became obsessed with Woods, and black sports fans looked up to him, not because he was a trailblazer, but because he was a black player who did well.
Enter Caitlin Clark, a ‘boring’ straight white woman who, other than being a boring straight white woman, dominated women’s college basketball like nobody else before her, white or black. Does it matter that she is a straight white woman? Should it matter? In today’s world, of course it matters, and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise. In general, white basketball stars tend to be few and far between. So when they do arise, I tend to enjoy watching them. Sure, it’s the WNBA - largely unwatchable - but if I’m turning the channel and Clark is on, I’m much more likely to at least stop for a few minutes and pay attention, and I’ll bet plenty of other white people are as well, though most would never admit the reason.
Ironically, media leftists seem to enjoy taking potshots at her solely on the basis of her race. Yet, there are plenty who would praise those reactions while calling me a racist for mine. The double standard, as always with this sort of issue, is blatant but not the least bit surprising.
Do I expect to see white people someday dominate professional football and basketball based on merit? I'd be delusional if I claimed I did. Look up any list of the world’s top runners, for example, and try to find a single white person among them. Some groups are just better at certain things than other groups, and that will never change. But that makes following those few, special white players all the more enjoyable.
None of this means that I don’t have plenty of favorite players in various sports who aren’t white. I do, and have my entire life. Ultimately, it’s about performance and winning, or it should be, and if a black player is winning for my team, I’m a fan. Still, when it isn’t just representation for representation’s sake, it sure is nice to see some representation.