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The rules of sports victories are very simple: Champions are invited to the White House, losers aren’t.
It’s baffling that first lady Jill Biden is suddenly trying to switch up that obvious and intuitive practice after the Louisiana State University (LSU) women’s basketball team defeated the University of Iowa in Sunday’s NCAA Division I Tournament final.
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“I know we'll have the champions come to the White House; we always do. So, we hope LSU will come,” Biden told supporters in Denver on Monday. “But, you know, I'm going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come too, because they played such a good game.”
Yeah, that’s not how any of this works.
It’s hard not to see the racial undertones and double standards at play here after there was much fuss regarding LSU forward and Final Four Most Outstanding Player Angel Reese’s taunt—the You Can’t See Me” hand gesture popularized by former WWE wrestler John Cena—toward national player of the year, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark on Sunday.
Everyone from Shaquille O’Neal to Keith Olbermann have been butting heads on whether or not Reese was wrong for her competitive gesture. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy called Reese a “classless piece of shit.” It should be noted that it was Clark, not Reese, who previously garnered a reputation for making the same “You Can’t See Me” hand gesture—that was never a hot button issue until her fellow Black opponent did it.
During a post-game press conference, Reese made it clear that she, too, noticed how others unfairly weighed in on her all season.
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“I don’t fit in a box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. I’m too ghetto. But when other people do it, y’all say nothing. So this was for the girls that look like me, that’s going to speak up on what they believe in,” she said. “It’s unapologetically you.”
By suggesting that both teams should be invited, it appears as though the first lady is trying to form a sort of peace treaty amongst the two players. But the losing player Clark, who is white, sharing the spotlight with the winning Reese isn’t the sort of compromise that is fair and just. For starters, it reinforces a racial double standard that Black players can’t be great without the insertion of their white peers.
Right now, we should be celebrating the well-earned victory of the LSU Tigers—not continue to debate and further diminish their win because their star Black athlete expressed her competitiveness out loud following an intense game. To ask for both teams to be present at the White House is to reinforce sexist and racist double standards. The message being sent is that confident Black women simply can’t boast their achievements without facing some level of humbling by sharing their spotlight with white women who lose.
Reese, who hasn’t been silent since the controversy, was right when she tweeted about Biden’s suggestion of inviting both teams as being a “joke.”
I agree with her. The first lady must be joking to think that it’s wise to potentially reinforce the same tired tropes of making Black women subservient to the subconscious insecurities of white women.
Let LSU celebrate their victory solo, let Reese be great, and let Black players be just as boastfully competitive as their white counterparts.
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