USA Today columnist Nancy Armour is trending on social media this Thursday due to her latest opinion piece on Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark.
Clark, who is averaging 21.0 points and 7.9 assists per game this year, was called out by Armour just in time for this weekend's WNBA All-Star Game. The USA Today columnist believes Clark's antics on the court, such as flopping and yelling at the refs, need to come to an end.
That being said, Armour lost the plot while ripping into Clark's competitive habits.
"It seems there is a white nationalist element to Clark’s fandom that is deeply, deeply problematic, made even more so because the WNBA is made up predominantly of Black women, many of them queer," Armour wrote. "When Clark claims fouls that don’t exist, when she goes on profanity-laced tirades at referees, those racists see her as a white woman in need of saving and take matters into their own hands."
© Trevor Ruszkowski-Imagn Images.
Later on in Armour's opinion piece, she made a remark about Emmett Till, a Chicago native who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
"It shouldn’t need reminding this country has an awful history of Black people being harmed, even killed, in the name of “defending” white women. The WNBA's All-Star Game this weekend is in Chicago, Emmett Till's hometown, and a local art gallery is currently hosting an exhibit imagining his life if he hadn't been lynched. While it’s incumbent on the WNBA to do more to protect its players, there also should be an expectation on Clark to recognize the wider consequences of her actions."
Nancy Armour is under heavy fire.
Though it's not much of a surprise, the basketball world is shocked that Armour would bring up the lynching of Emmett Till in an article about Caitlin Clark.
"There is a section/paragraph in this story that is among the most insane choices to include I’ve ever read in any sports story from a serious publication," Sam Vecenie of The Athletic said. "Like, the kind of crazy where I genuinely have no idea how an editor let it get through."
"This article is insane," former NFL offensive lineman and Fox Sports analyst Geoff Schwartz replied.
"You've seriously lost the plot if you're citing Emmett Till in an article about a basketball player. Till's lynching is one of the darkest stains on American history," a fan wrote. "Using it to make a point about a sports figure you dislike is truly appalling."
"So Caitlin Clark argues with referees, racists supposedly assign their own meaning to it, and somehow Clark becomes responsible for their behavior," another fan commented. "That is not accountability. It is a tortured chain of speculation designed to blame her no matter what she does."
As of this moment, USA Today has not taken down Armour's opinion piece.
