It all started for Angel Reese after a loss.
“I don’t fit the narrative; I don’t fit in the box y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood, I’m too ghetto — y’all told me that all year. So this is for the girls that look like me, that’s going to speak up on what you believe in. It’s unapologetically you, and that’s what I did it for tonight,” said LSU star Angel Reese in a tearful post-game speech following LSU’s loss in the Final Four to Iowa.
The next day, FS1’s Speak host Emmanuel Acho gave what he deemed a “gender-neutral, racially indifferent take on Angel Reese.”
“Angel Reese, you can’t be the big bad wolf and but then kind of cry like Courage the Cowardly Dog,” exclaimed Acho. “Because if you want to act grown, which she has! If you want to get paid like you’re grown, which you are! if you want to talk to grown folks like you’re grown, which you did….then postgame when you take an ‘L’ then you just gotta’ take it on the chin.”
Acho’s comments are the furthest thing from gender and race-neutral.
Black women in sports receive the fiercest vitriol from public media, and Dr. Moya Bailey would say Acho’s comments were misogynoir – the anti-black racist misogyny Black women experience. Oftentimes, the racialized and gendered harassment Black women face is shaped by sports media narratives, which is why discussions on this subject must be had in sports media.
In pursuing compelling storylines, the media often resort to unfair characterizations, particularly regarding Black women.
In the case of LSU and Reese, they were painted as villains, a false and damaging narrative that justifies criticism. Angel Reese, however, accepted and played the role she was assigned.
Responding to Acho, Joy Taylor eloquently pointed out that Reese’s behavior is no different than that of male athletes and asked who made Reese the villain. Ironic that the Black guy who wrote the book about uncomfortable conversations with Black men was not ready to have an uncomfortable conversation with a Black woman or about Black women.
Acho wants to act grown on TV, get paid by media companies like he’s grown, and talk to grown folks like he’s grown, so he needs to be held accountable like he’s grown.
After Joy’s question, Acho’s initial response was that Reese created the narrative, but Joy countered with a gendered and race-inclusive perspective that Reese was herself- an unapologetic Black woman who embraces Black culture to its fullest.
Dr. Tomika Ferguson writes that college sports are spaces for Black women college athletes to disrupt oppressive structures. Individually, Reese didn’t have the power to create a national storyline; in fact, it was quite the opposite. Reese embraced and countered narratives about her Blackness and swagger by doubling down on herself, after which sports media pounced on it and ran with it for these companies have the power to control narratives and know how to use it to their advantage.
And based on the ratings of the Iowa vs LSU game, which averaged 12.3 million viewers, they succeeded.
There were other very compelling storylines that drove hype for the game. College basketball’s biggest stars headlined the national championship rematch, The LA Times debacle and The Washington Post’s underwhelming tell-all about LSU coach Kim Mulkey.
However, the leading storyline was about race and gender.
Sports media used its power to narrate that story using visuals comparing Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, two of the biggest stars in women’s sports.
Social media took note. LSU players and coaches took note.
These politics of race and gender underpin this entire situation, so I’m not surprised not one man on that set could answer Joy’s question. They don’t know, won’t show, or just don’t care about the media’s political power over race and gender narratives.
I echo the words of my great Black women colleagues Dr. Ezinne Ofoegbu, Dr. Leslie Ekpe and Dr. Letisha Engracia Cardoso Brown in that by giving a “gender-neutral, racially indifferent” take, Acho fails to consider how his race, his gender and his role within sports media furthered harm against a Black woman athletes.
Ignoring race or gender and using a platform such as FS1 are political choices.
Acho knew that echoing “she deserved it” and “she shouldn’t have been talkin’” would get attention. He used his position as a social media analyst to try and detract attention away from race and gender to be “objective”; sadly, he failed to realize that there was nothing objective about that.
He was so thirsty to get views that he, like many others, made a political choice to normalize the brutality against Angel Reese and Black women athletes across the world. This is a violent political decision that caused far more harm than good.
Acho may not understand gendered or racialized politics, so that could be why he was not prepared or qualified to remove them.
That’s why it is time for him to have an uncomfortable conversation with a Black man.
