Brittney Griner Is Privileged | Bobby Burack

Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, and Cameron Brink have all recently claimed to acknowledge their "privilege" as white women in the WNBA. Of course, they didn't actually mean it. If white privilege existed in the WNBA, white women would not have to keep apologizing for it.

That said, there is a type of privilege instilled within the culture of the WNBA. It's just not the type of privilege that the players and media want us to see.

On May 23, OutKick posted a clip of Brittney Griner from the night prior in which she uttered profanities from the bench of a game against the Indiana Fever. The clip garnered millions of views as most observers read her lips to say "trash fucking white girl" after fouling out.

Griner was asked about the video for the first time on Sunday by OutKick reporter Dan Zaksheske. Griner said she couldn't remember what she said, that watching the clip wouldn't help her remember, but she knows she didn't say what it looked like.

Got all that?

"I would never say that," Griner said." There's no place for that in our league, and [I] wouldn't say that. I was mad about a call. I know it wasn't that because I wouldn't use that type of language."

The idea that Griner was unaware of the video, despite its coverage and OutKick asking her management team for comment, seems almost unfathomable. Nonetheless, nearly every news organization has cited her comments on Sunday as proof she didn't say "trash fucking white girl."

Whether you believe Griner or not--the video remains the video-- it took nearly a month for someone to ask Griner about her remarks. If it weren't for OutKick, no one would have ever asked her still.

Moreover, the WNBA has not said a word. Nor did it last month when Angel Reese shared a video on TikTok, mocking Caitlin Clark as a scared little "white girl afraid to catch the fade." 

So much for the league's "no space for hate" and "zero tolerance for racism" campaigns it launched before the season. Evidently, those initiatives don't apply to black women.

Skip Bayless discussed this obvious double standard last week, referencing Griner's apparent remarks.

"I waited to comment on this until the WNBA was able to investigate it," Bayless began. "I wanted them to issue a statement about it. But we have heard nothing from the WNBA, absolutely nothing. And Brittney Griner has not commented, which I find significant. "It sure looks like Brittney Griner says ‘fucking white girl.’" Bayless added. "To me, the last word is ‘girl’ not ‘call.’ Tell me I’m wrong."

"Regardless of why Brittney Griner said what she said," Bayless continued, "I want to know, is the WNBA okay with one of its players saying ‘fucking white girl on the bench and getting caught by TV cameras saying such? I guess they are. I guess they’re okay with it. Obviously, the league would very much not be okay with a white player saying 'fucking black girl’ on the bench in anger and getting caught by TV cameras. That would be an immediate suspension, if not a career-ender for said white girl. But because the league is 60 percent black, that makes it okay for a black player to say ‘fucking white girl’ in anger without repercussions?

And that's privilege. The fact that Griner can just deny saying it and no investigation will follow is a privilege that would never be awarded to white players.

Had a white woman said what Griner almost certainly said but replaced "white" with "black," it wouldn't have taken OutKick to ask the question. In fact, the WNBA would have put out a statement announcing an investigation before the clip even had a chance to trend.

And yet, we continuously hear that Caitlin Clark is dripping with privilege because she is a straight white girl from Iowa. It's all such a lie. It shouldn't be this hard for a league to police racism. All it has to do is take credible matters seriously and dubious claims unseriously.

Unfortunately, the demand to prove that white women are, in fact, privileged is too great for the league to operate honestly.

Put simply, the WNBA created an environment of anti-white privilege through its efforts to combat so-called white privilege. It taking OutKick to ask Brittney Griner about the most viral clip of her career underscores that as a fact.