WNBA player A’ja Wilson, presently with the defending champion Las Vegas Aces, has secured a shoe deal with Nike. The A’One releases in 2025.
One would think that the endorsement deal, combined with the fact that in her six years in the league, Wilson has won two MVP awards and two championships, would lead to one happy camper. Guess again.
“I think it’s a huge thing. I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is,” Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson said when asked about the race element in Clark’s popularity and before she recently signed two major endorsement deals. “It really is because you can be top notch at what you are as a Black woman, but yet maybe that’s something that people don’t want to see.
“They don’t see it as marketable, so it doesn’t matter how hard I work. It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”
Really now.
Let’s take a look at the present discrimination black female athletes face. Take, for example, gymnast Simone Biles. In 2023, the nefarious racist forces that govern the corporate world ignored Biles to the tune of … seven million dollars in earned endorsements. If that’s discrimination, the corporate world is more inept in this area than the Biden administration is at running the country.
Remember field and track star Florence Griffith-Joyner? Before her life was sadly cut short in 1998 at age 38 from an epileptic seizure, Griffith-Joyner was getting the paper back when getting the paper meant fetching the morning newspaper from your front porch. From 1989:
She has contracts with Proxy shoes, Agfa film, Toshiba America copiers, Sally Hansen nail products and LJN Toys, Ltd. These deals, together with the Japanese endorsements, have lifted her income since the Olympics into the $4 million range.
Those darn bigoted corporate folk strike again.
It goes without saying — but I’ll say it anyway — that Nike not striking a deal with Wilson until now is the height of egregious race-based misogyny. The emphasis here is on the race-based part of the equation, as for decades, Nike has been completely disregarding black athletes as possible product endorsers and … oh, wait …
We now look at Caitlin Clark, the redneck’s redneck who … um, hang on, there’s a video of her meeting her basketball idol?
Wow, awkward.
The reason A’ja Wilson is not rolling in endorsements has nothing to do with race or gender. It definitely has nothing to do with not bathing in laudatory praise from the media:
The 27-year-old’s status as one of the most bankable stars in women’s basketball has been confirmed as she penned a deal that will make her the face of a special collection and a signature sneaker.
No, it’s because she’s not marketable.
An inconvenient truth is that when it comes time to choose a heroine, little girls pay little, if any, attention to race. Take, for example, Disney princesses. Spend a day at Disneyland or Walt Disney World. Watch the crowd. Note how girls dress as their favorite princesses without considering matching their ethnic identity with the princess in question. You see black Elsas, Hispanic Snow Whites, and white Jasmines. Why? It’s the being a princess part in which the identifier lies, and if the princess in question has magic powers, so much the better.
Want more endorsements, A’ja Wilson? Try dropping in 3s like they’re layups and dropping dimes to teammates like Caitlin Clark. She’s fun to watch. Wilson is a superb talent, but nothing is sufficiently compelling about her game or on-court presence to make a casual fan tune in. That’s not based on race or gender. That’s a simple fact.
Oh, and try not to bite the hand that feeds you.
