i mean… 103 years late, but I’m glad that they’re doing this now. I wish they’d done it in 1921, though.
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“The best time to plant a tree…”
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Up their ass?’
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It found that 78.3% of books with minoritised ethnic main characters were Black or ambiguously Black or brown, and that 53% of books with Black or ambiguously Black or brown main characters were by white authors and illustrators.
I guess seeing too many profiles of authors rejected in other genres but accepted as children’s book authors made me believe that area was a bit different:
One step forward, two steps back (again).
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My counter would be one of my favorite young children’s books: The Snowy Day.
Sometimes, it takes one to know one: someone from one minority who has experienced prejudice for themselves and can empathize with others.
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I have never felt anything but safe, welcomed, and celebrated at a WNBA game — until Wednesday night. The crowd attending Game 2 of the first-round matchup between the Connecticut Sun and the Indiana Fever felt different, and not in a good way.
Even though I’m a veteran sportswriter, I was not credentialed as a press member for this one. Instead, I attended the game as a fan with my partner. After arriving, I quickly noticed the crowd seemed to be rooting for the visiting team, the Fever. Most of the people seated around me were also Fever fans, most of them decked out in Fever guard Caitlin Clark gear.
This didn’t bother me, but it did surprise me. I’d heard (and written) about the “Caitlin Clark effect” all season, but this was my first time seeing it in action. As someone who has spent the better part of a decade trying to tell anyone who will listen how great the WNBA is, I’m thrilled to see more people jumping on board. But very quickly, something started to feel off about the crowd.
“Tonight I felt very uncomfortable,” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a Sun fan who has been attending games since 2018, told Andscape. “It was disappointing to see so many people from the area come out to support the opposing team. And on top of it, they had a kind of vitriol for our players that had racial overtones.” Prescod-Weinstein was at the game with their husband. They are both people of color, and Prescod-Weinstein is queer and agender. As a result, “I didn’t feel safe challenging the nasty behavior from the people around me,” Prescod-Weinstein said.
As the game continued, the woman behind me said she’d seen Sun guard DiJonai Carrington shove Clark and became increasingly outraged about it. Then Carrington fell to the ground, and she shouted, “What, did you trip on your eyelashes?”
It was at that point that my partner asked her, “Are you going to be racist for the entire game?” She huffed and puffed a bit but quieted down. Then I noticed a woman standing up and dancing to the music two sections over. Her shirt said, “Ban nails” and she was wearing cartoonishly long fake acrylic nails made out of paper on her hands. It was clear that she was mocking Carrington. There were several “Make America Great Again” hats, including a man wearing a “Trump 2024” hat and holding a sign that said, “Make Basketball Great Again #22.”
Every time the Fever scored, the crowd would erupt, but it didn’t feel like fans were rooting for their team. It felt like a threat. There was an ominous feeling in the building.
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There has been much made of some beef between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clarke that has taken on a lot of racial overtones (or just plain tones for a lot of it) It is very disappointing, but not surprising.
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It is absolutely NOT Caitlin Clark’s responsibility to control these assholes, but I hope she has or plans to say something about this racist shit happening at these games. I’m not a b-ball fan, but from what I’ve heard, the WNBA tends towards inclusivity and acceptance.
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I’m not a b-ball fan either, but I’ve heard the same about the WNBA.
The WNBA did release a statement:
“This is not about rivalries or iconic personalities fueling a business model,” Terri Jackson, executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players’ Association, said in a statement following Engelbert’s remarks. “This kind of toxic fandom should never be tolerated or left unchecked. It demands immediate action, and frankly, should have been addressed long ago.”
The WNBA released a statement after Wednesday’s game, saying that it will not tolerate “racist, derogatory, or threatening comments made about players, teams, and anyone affiliated with the league.” But for many, including some players, the statement is too little, too late.
She has made a statement:
Clark was asked about the hate other players have received this season, and affirmed racism has no place in the league.
“Nobody in our league should be facing any sort of racism, hurtful, disrespectful, hateful comments and threats,” she told James Boyd of The Athletic. “Those aren’t fans. Those are trollies.”
Some players don’t feel that was enough.
Carrington has been critical of Clark this season when she wondered how someone “can not be bothered by their name being used to justify racism, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia & the intersectionalities of them.” She encouraged Clark, who hasn’t been very outspoken about her fans, to use her platform for good, saying “silence is a luxury.” Following the media coverage of Game 1, Washington Mystics guard Brittney Sykes took to X with a similar sentiment.
“Even if you don’t WANT the responsibility …. You STILL have a responsibility! Speak up,” Sykes wrote. “The W has no place for the s— that’s being displayed or said to women in our league … Don’t use players to hide behind true intentions of being mean, nasty, and racist.”
It’s not fair that the media and a segment of her fan base are forcing Clark to be an avatar for white supremacy, but she’s going to have to actively push back. If her Black colleagues are being affected by the racism and misogynoir and she chooses silence, she’s choosing to take advantage of the fact that she can check out of dealing with it while they can’t.
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I had that book for my kid, and recently passed it on to a friend who has an 18 month old.
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African Americans have been in South Carolina since 1526. That makes it almost exactly 500 years – half a millennium – with no official recognition.
Meanwhile, people fight to keep monuments to white traitors standing.
Why is Childish Gambino playing in my head on repeat?
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And the “cherry” on top is that the first PNC bank was going to charge her a “processing” fee for cashing their customer’s check? WTAF!?! That’s gotta be illegal.
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of its 535 members, 100 were descendants of slaveholders, including Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell.
Legislators whose ancestors were large slaveholders – defined in our study as owning 16 or more slaves– have a current median net worth five times larger than their peers whose ancestors were not slaveholders: $5.6 million vs. $1.1 million. These results remained largely the same after accounting for age, race and education
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