- Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler – who co-owns the Atlanta Dream – came out against the WNBA’s plan for players to wear “Black Lives Matter” and “Say Her Name” warm-ups on Tuesday.
- In a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, Loeffler said the league’s embrace of the social justice movement endorses a “particular political agenda” and “sends a message of exclusion.”
- An outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, the Republican Loeffler is in the midst of a hotly contested special election in which fellow Republican Doug Collins is challenging her from the right.
- Loeffler’s blatant leveraging of her WNBA ownership for political gain while simultaneously calling on the league “to remove politics from sports” constitutes a particularly insidious brand of hypocrisy.
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Kelly Loeffler – a sitting American politician who co-owns a professional American sports team – has made it her mission “to remove politics from sports.”
Read that again.
The US Senator and Atlanta Dream stakeholder came under fire on Tuesday after she penned a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert opposing the league’s plan for players to wear “Black Lives Matter” and “Say Her Name” warm-ups prior to games this season. Loeffler argued that the WNBA’s embrace of the social justice movement endorses a “particular political agenda” and “sends a message of exclusion” in a time when the league could provide a “unifying rallying point for the American people,” per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Unsurprisingly, WNBA players – 82.7% of whom are people of color, per The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport’s 2019 Racial and Gender Report Card – did not take kindly to Loeffler’s blatant disregard for the humanity of Black people. But beneath Loeffler’s racist calls to replace messages of social justice with American flags on every jersey, the Georgian politician’s charge that sports should be apolitical constitutes a particularly insidious brand of hypocrisy.
By calling on the WNBA "to remove politics from sports," Loeffler attempted to leverage her Atlanta Dream ownership for political gain
Loeffler - an outspoken Republican who has closely aligned herself with President Donald Trump - is in the midst of a hotly contested special election. The 49-year-old was appointed to succeed incumbent Senator Johnny Isakson at the beginning of 2020 after he resigned due to health complications. She is now running to remain in Isakson's seat for the remainder of his term, but she's facing challenges from both sides of the aisle.
A recent poll commissioned by End Citizens United suggests that Loeffler trails fellow Republican Doug Collins by two points, while their Democratic opponent sits close behind in a tight third place, per The Hill. Should no single candidate capture a majority of the vote come election time in November, the two top finishers will compete in a runoff in January.
Collins - who was Trump's preferred choice to take over Isakson's position back in 2019 - has long served as a Representative for Georgia's 9th congressional district. He was outspoken in his defense of the president throughout the impeachment inquiry last year and is running to the right of Loeffler, who does not have a long tenure in the political arena and has often been criticized for espousing more moderate views.
It's no surprise, then, that Loeffler would take the opportunity to denounce the WNBA's embrace of the Black Lives Matter in order to prove herself as a staunch conservative. The "ugly face-off" within the Republican ranks, as Vox described the race back in January, has forced Loeffler to shift her views closer to those endorsed by the fringes of the Grand Old Party. Her suggestion that the WNBA replace messages condemning police brutality and racism with American flags was low-hanging fruit in an election where every point is crucial.
Ultimately, Loeffler's stance against the league has backfired on all sides
Collins hit back at his incumbent rival on Tuesday evening with a scathing statement questioning Loeffler's involvement in the Dream's "liberal agenda advocacy business."
"Kelly has long supported the Dream's dream of abortion on demand, gun confiscation and other liberal causes," Collins said, per his campaign's release. "She even hired Stacey Abrams as the team lawyer and honored her on the court - while Abrams was running for Governor against Brian Kemp - as an 'Inspiring Woman.'"
"Now that she's pretending to be a conservative to run for public office, she should explain her silence and divest herself of this team and her past progressive advocacy," he added.
Doug Collins with just...a remarkable statement on Kelly Loeffler and the WNBA: pic.twitter.com/TfFpYCyx8V
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) July 8, 2020
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, women's basketball's biggest stars were quick to express their vehement disapproval of the senator's letter. The WNBA is widely considered one of the most progressive professional sports leagues in the United States, and many within its ranks called for Loeffler's ouster from the league.
The WNBA players union did not mince words in its call to remove the Georgia Republican from her ownership post.
"E-N-O-U-G-H! O-U-T!" the WNBPA posted on Twitter.
The league itself rebuffed Loeffler's proposal by promising to "continue to use our platforms to vigorously advocate for social justice." Still, Engelbert stopped short of banning Loeffler from the league, stating that the controversial owner "has not served as Governor of the Atlanta Dream since October 2019 and is no longer involved in the day-to-day business of the team."
The following was released by the WNBA: pic.twitter.com/wH6ZmyDDcx
— WNBA (@WNBA) July 7, 2020
Loeffler held WNBA players to a double standard by attempting to stifle their voices while amplifying her own
A number of WNBA players made appearances on news networks Tuesday night and Wednesday. In responding to Loeffler's letter, many likened the senator's most recent comments to Laura Ingraham's infamous "shut up and dribble" remark meant to dismiss LeBron James' and Kevin Durant's opinions back in 2018.
In an interview with ABC News Live Tuesday evening, former Atlanta Dream star Layshia Clarendon - who currently plays for the New York Liberty - said that "what we see so often with sports, with culture, with music is that you're OK with Black people as long as they kind of stay in their place or they're performing or they're sports stars."
"Now that we're kind of taking our power back and asking for, you know, better placing in communities, we're asking for more resources to be poured in, I think it is uncomfortable," she added. "As a Black woman, as a queer woman playing in sports, you know, my existence is political like sport is, and so I think it was funny to ask the flag as well."
"As a Black woman, as a queer woman playing in sports... my existence is political," @Layshiac, of @nyliberty, says in response to Sen. Loeffler's criticism of the @WNBA. https://t.co/R4LWuCV7g5
"We're literally fighting for Black lives to matter in this country." pic.twitter.com/l0dgIICNh4
— ABC News Live (@ABCNewsLive) July 8, 2020
Washington Mystics guard Natasha Cloud - who has already announced her decision to sit out the 2020 WNBA season to advocate for social reform - made a similar point in her interview with Don Lemon on CNN Tonight.
"When our league is made up of 80% of Black females, this directly affects us," Cloud said. "Every single day when we take off those uniforms we walk out into the world and we can potentially be George Floyd. Shoot, we could be in our beds and be Breonna Taylor. So for [Loeffler] to come out and say that we're divisive and that Black Lives Matter as a movement is a divisive organization, I call her BS on that."
"To be a partial owner in that and cheer on the sidelines and support your players but you don't support them when they take those uniforms off, it's a problem," Cloud added. "That's not just a Loeffler problem, that's America's problem. They look at us as athletes and expect us just to shoot and score ... and not have an opinion about something that directly affects us."
“Our league is made up of 80% of Black females,” says WNBA star Natasha Cloud about Atlanta Dream co-owner Sen. Loeffler’s critic of the WNBA’s Black Lives Matter initiative. “To be a partial owner...but you don’t support them when they take their uniforms off—it’s a problem.” pic.twitter.com/s6eHOhIolQ
— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) July 8, 2020
The WNBA - and the sports world at large - is well-versed in the art of outmaneuvering those opposed to social justice initiatives
Long before the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and the widespread reckoning with race relations in America that ensued, the WNBA and its players have been vocal advocates for social and criminal justice reform. When a Minnesota police officer shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop back in 2016, the Minnesota Lynx publicly called for "justice and accountability" with pre-game warm-ups that read "Change Starts with Us."
Six-time league All-Star Maya Moore has put her professional basketball career on hold to help free those wrongfully convicted and imprisoned by the American criminal justice system. Countless other players have followed in her footsteps in the wake of the recent surge in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Their work is not unprecedented. From Tommie Smith's and John Carlos' Black Power salute on the podium at the 1968 Olympics and Billie Jean King's fight for equality of the sexes in tennis to Muhammad Ali's conscientious objection to the Vietnam War and Colin Kaepernick's decision to kneel in protest of police brutality during the national anthem, there are countless examples of the biggest stars in sport using their platforms to advocate for the causes about which they are most passionate.
Each of the above individuals faced scrutiny and pushback in taking a stand for what they believed in. Each, ultimately, has been regarded with praise and adulation in hindsight, while their naysayers have fallen on the wrong side of history.
So too will be the case for the WNBA players speaking out against police brutality via the Black Lives Matter movement, and so too will be the case for naysayers like Loeffler. The athletes' stance that Black Lives Matter should be, and someday will be, universally indisputable. And the senator's suggestion to the contrary - and that athletes are somehow out of line by speaking out - should be, and someday will be, considered universally unacceptable.
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