Prior to the start of Tuesday’s WNBA games, players from several teams, including the Atlanta Dream and Phoenix Mercury arrived to courts wearing, bold, black “VOTE WARNOCK” t-shirts.
In a video shared by Holly Rowe on Twitter, the players walked off the bus single file, their expressions unreadable under their masks, and let the messages on their t-shirts do the talking for them.
For those who need a quick refresher, the t-shirts were an endorsement of U.S. Senate candidate Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, who is running against Dream co-owner and Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler for the seat she currently holds.
For the past couple of months, WNBA players have clashed publicly with Loeffler over her critical statements about the Black Lives Matter movement, which the WNBA has supported with on-court protests as well as off-court actions.
In a letter to the WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert in early July, Loeffler, who has aligned herself closely with President Trump, pushed back against the league’s promotion of Black Lives Matter during the season, which included BLM signage on courts, as well as players wearing jerseys which say Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name. Instead, Loeffler requested the American flag be added to all uniforms to “reflect the values of freedom and equality for all.”
It would be easy to write off the clash between Loeffler and WNBA players as a simple sports beef, but their back and forth is emblematic of the political struggle happening all across this country, between those in power and those who seek to reclaim some of that power. After all, the WNBA is a majority black league and Loeffler, who has an ownership stake in the Dream, is white.
In pushing back against the WNBA’s embrace of Black Lives Matter, Loeffler has resorted to debunked talking points that align with the rhetoric of far-right movement, accusing BLM, which seeks racial justice, of having “radical ideas and Marxist foundations,” a phrase seemingly designed to get the maximum amount of air play on Fox News.
About their decision to wear pro-Warnock t-shirts on Tuesday, the idea which came at the behest of Sue Bird, Dream forward Elizabeth Williams told reporters that “for effective change to happen, there has to be policy changes. And so if we’re going to sit here and talk about wanting justice reform, part of that is making sure that we have officials in office that understand that.”
Embracing Warnock, who supports the Black Lives Matter movement, is a natural extension of the activism of WNBA players. The fact that it also goes against Loeffler, who has made it clear she doesn’t support the same political goals of the players in her league, is particularly sweet bit of schadenfreude.
Of course, after seeing how hard she got dunked on (pun intended) Loeffler resorted to the entitled whine of all public figures who can not stomach having their authority questioned. In a statement, Loeffler complained about “cancel culture.”
“This is just more proof that the out of control cancel culture wants to shut out anyone who disagrees with them. It’s clear that the league is more concerned with playing politics than basketball,” she wrote.
In a word, Loeffler’s response is laughable.
WNBA players used their political muscle and their status as sports figures with a public platform to advocate for a candidate that shares their political values. That is not “cancel culture,” but exercising their political free speech, which I’m hopeful Loeffler would agree, is a right guaranteed them by the U.S. Constitution.
What Loeffler’s statement speaks to most tellingly though, is her own fragile ego and sense of entitlement over what messages Black players are allowed to speak. As the capitalist in charge of the means of production for the team she owns, Loeffler feels she has the right to control the views of her workers. The WNBA, and specifically Dream players, are here to explicitly state that is not the case.
“I think when all this stuff started happening with her, we didn’t want to feel like we were pawns,” Williams said.
The term cancel culture gets trotted around a lot these days, blurted out anytime someone with a platform feels they’re being unfairly held accountable for their words and actions. A few weeks ago, many public writers, reporters and public intellectuals complained about the idea in a much mocked open letter in Harpers Magazine.
People who complain about cancel culture aren’t bemoaning the death of public debate, which is still healthy and strong, but that their ideas are no longer universally accepted, that they must share the spotlight with otherwise marginalized voices and they must suffer the consequences of sometimes bad ideas they publicly voice. Getting a Twitter ratio is not “cancel culture,” it is merely people pointing out that you said something indefensibly stupid.
At its heart, people who complain about cancel culture are complaining about sharing power and the public space. Loeffler has quickly cast herself as the victim here, when it’s clear she holds all the power. There is no dangers of Loeffler, who has millions, of being “canceled.” She will most likely be able to weather the political storm of WNBA players who have shown they are unparalleled in their activism. What she may not be able to weather though, is the public embarrassment. WNBA players showed her their collective power. On that level, Loeffler has shown she’s unable to compete.
