Racial controversy in ladies athletics

ment and in reference to her future championship ring.

praised for the same actions, called “passionate” or “powerful.”

Maia pak EDITOR -In-chief

Although this year’s NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship marked a milestone for women’s sports, with viewership shattering previous records, these women’s achievements in the tournament did not remain at the forefront of all the attention. Rather, the media’s flawed reporting displayed damaging and harmful racial bias, dictating the narrative around the event.

March

Madness’ Most Out - standing Player, LSU star Angel Reese, was heavily criticized during the tournament for a gesture made toward Iowa’s leading scorer, Caitlyn Clark. During the game, Reese approached Clark, while waving an open hand over her face and pointing to her ring finger—a gesture referencing wrestler John Cena’s “you can’t see me” senti-

Sports journalists and critics were swift to respond to this gesture, calling Reese, who is Black, “ghetto,” “classless” and “an idiot.” However, LSU fans were equally quick to point out that Clark, a white athlete widely known for her expansive trash talk, had made a similar gesture previously in the tournament. Yet Clark’s paralleled actions were not at all acknowledged by the media.

These arguments about such

In every aspect of our lives, the words we use are impactful. Especially in the media, misrepresentation can cause a trickle-down effect in society, perpetuating stereotypes by providing younger generations with a skewed lens by which they learn to view the world.

In every aspect of our lives, the words we use are impactful. Especially in the media...

Through the racial stereotyping of our athletes, we diminish the achievements of the individual and take away from what they have accomplished.

The primary focus of the tournament should have been the amazing performances by these female athletes, and their overcoming of countless barriers for women’s athletics. Shifting the dialogue to communicate racial stereotypes not only demeans the Black community, but also regresses women’s athletic accomplishments as a whole. been described as “aggressive” or “angry,” white athletes have been

The dialogue perpetrated reduces the stories of accomplished athletes, such as Reese and Clark, in order to sell the fabrication of an overdone racial rivalry—where the white athlete is victimized and the Black athlete is volatile.

However, as evident through the NCAA Tournament, neither of these things are true. Both Reese and Clark have spoken up about the narrative, each praising the other and reeling the story back into one where both their accomplishments are recognized and respected.

In a world that demands to see color, we must stop viewing sports in Black and white. While it is important to consciously communicate stories where race is a factor, it is also important to eradicate the dialogue surrounding stories where it is not.

Filtering out the noise in order to fully understand the relevance of a story is a skill that we, as everyday consumers of media, must develop in order to best respond and comprehend information.

Of course, before joining the actual student newspaper, I had to first take the prerequisite class, Journalism I, the first of many stumbling blocks impeding my path to eventual success and prosperity as a Bull’s Eye staffer. During that year, Sisyphus was my idol and inspiration, for I weathered many seemingly insurmountable obstacles and braved the most excruciating of challenges.

Our old advisor Doug List put me through a gauntlet of trials: a battery of “Current Event” quizzes of devilish infamy, the abominable intensity of a 30-second interview and of course, most grueling of them all, our weekly blog assignments—-all of these I travailed and prevailed, until finally enough, in the fall of my sophomore year, I was ready to be baptized into the highly exclusive ranks of the newspaper staff.

And so it was, that the years that followed were a time of great joy and learning. How to write an essay, how to resolve conflicts, and even how to plug in a computer— all of these are skills that I have picked up from the innumerable deadline nights (all of which I attended to the very end, obviously, never leaving a second earlier than the event hosts) of the past few years.

I am also unable to forget the great contributions of the many brilliant minds I had the pleasure to work with in my time on staff.

Every single one of my colleagues has been unparalleled in their creativity for article ideas, especially those for my section, the Opinion section, of which I believe to be the most difficult to conceive thoughts for.

A great many of my fellows on staff also seem to have been borne with the wings of Hermes himself, for their responses to my Discord messages were invariably endowed with incomparable speed.

But in all honesty, I do appreciate how far I’ve come and how much I’ve managed to improve from my days on staff. Though at times there were struggles, I can’t say that I regret ever having joined the student newspaper.

Therefore, I would like to express a measure of thanks to everyone who I have worked with on The Bull’s Eye thus far. Our experiences together really helped me write my personal essay for college applications.