Former Women’s National Basketball Association star Sheryl Swoopes is fighting back, saying that black people are incapable of being racist after she was called a racist over recent comments about college basketball star Caitlin Clark.
Early this month, Swoopes, who is black, attacked white college basketball star Caitlin Clark and said that Clark doesn’t deserve the accolades she is getting for breaking women’s college basketball records.
Clark broke the NCAA’s women’s career scoring record on Feb. 15, leading Iowa to third place in women’s basketball this season.
Caitlin Clark, #22 of the Iowa Hawkeyes, reacts during the fourth quarter of the game against the Colorado Buffaloes in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament at Climate Pledge Arena on March 24, 2023, in Seattle, Washington. (Alika Jenner/Getty Images)
Clark also defeated one of Swoopes’s records after setting an NCAA Tournament record by scoring 191 points over Iowa’s six games last year. Clark demolished Swoopes’s 177 points for Texas Tech in 1993.
The college star’s success apparently led to sour grapes on Swoopes’s part.
Swoopes tried to diminish Clark’s achievements, but her claims were full of false statistics and misinformation, and social media users accused her of dissing Clark solely because the college star is white.
Sheryl Swoopes #22 of the Tulsa Shock celebrates drawing a foul during the last minutes of the WNBA game on July 26, 2011, at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Shane Bevel/NBAE via Getty Images)
The former college and WNBA star lashed out at Clark in several social media posts, claiming that Clark cheated because she used an extra year of eligibility and took 40 shots per game. Swoopes was not just wrong but extremely so. Not only has Clark not taken an extra year, but she has also had half of the average per-game shots that Swoopes claimed.
Naturally, Swoopes took a lot of heat online, and many called her a racist for attacking the white college star.
But now, Swoopes is fighting back and insisting that it is impossible for black people to be racist.
“For people to come at me and say that I made those comments because I’m a racist. First of all, Black people can’t be racist, but that’s the farthest thing from my mind,” Swoopes said on a recent episode of Gil’s Arena.
“I grew up in a very small West Texas town — predominantly white. My best childhood friend is white. Went to a predominantly white college. Won a national championship [and] pretty much everyone on the team was white. We’re sisters to this day. That’s not a part of my DNA,” She added.
Swoopes seems to be deploying the same trope that white people are always made fun of, only in reverse, when they say they have black friends, so their comments can’t be racist.
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