2024 WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson addressed what Caitlin Clark said about having “privilege” in Time Magazine.
A’ja Wilson (22, Las Vegas Aces) warms up before a May 13, 2022 WNBA game. / IMAGO / Sports Press Photo
In an article released in tandem with her being named the Time Athlete of the Year for 2024, Indiana Fever icon Caitlin Clark made a poignant statement addressing the privilege she believes is present in her life.
“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege. A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that… I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that,” Clark said.
“The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
These comments caused much discussion within the basketball community over the following days and weeks. While most people praised Clark for her words, some lamented it.
Las Vegas Aces superstar and 2024 WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson is one of the former, as she spoke at length about what Clark said during her own interview with Time Magazine for their Women of the Year issue.
“It’s powerful to me,” Wilson said of Clark’s comments. “As a Black woman in the WNBA, we have our struggles in showcasing who we really are. A lot of agendas get pushed on a lot of different platforms that may shadow us. You work so hard, but you still have to work 10 times harder just to be seen. So when we can have our counterparts speak up, it speaks volumes to me, because they’re in spaces where my path is never supposed to go. It’s crazy that we’re talking about that in 2025, but it’s real. We see those things as Black women. We see where people stand up and speak for us.
“I know [Clark] got a lot of backlash from that, because obviously we live in a world where they don’t want that, and it’s exhausting. But imagine dealing with that and then having to go out and play every single night, having to constantly have to worry, How are they about to downgrade my resume now? What more do I have to do in order to showcase how elite and how serious I take my job? But I also do it with love and passion and fun. A lot of people don’t want to see me at the top, and that’s fine, but I’m gonna be there, because I worked my butt off to get there,” she continued.
“I have a privilege in a lot of different ways. I can be in spaces where a lot of other Black women, white women, however you want to see it, are not—but that’s where I’m going to try to use my privilege of being a professional athlete to help others, because that’s what gives me my why. So claps, steps, all the in-between, because I know it’s hard to speak out on that. That’s why I try to speak out as much as I can, but people just see it a different way. That’s OK. I just want people to understand that when people can speak up about us as Black women in rooms that we may not be in, that means a lot. Because it’s a little piece of us in there—they can hold that door open for us to walk through. So I’m grateful.”
A’ja Wilson: “Not getting the three-peat was hard. The regret is the hardest part that I've had to deal with in this offseason, because I'm like, ‘What could I have done differently to get a different outcome?’ When in reality, it just wasn't our time” https://t.co/B5QoSbbvGg
— TIME (@TIME) February 20, 2025
Props to Wilson for such an eloquent response to what could have been a difficult question to answer.
