{"id":882584,"date":"2026-10-15T00:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T00:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/882584\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T00:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T00:32:11","slug":"elle-duncan-makes-a-fool-of-herself-saying-she-and-black-women-are-the-real-victims-of-the-wnba-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/882584\/","title":{"rendered":"Elle Duncan makes a fool of herself saying she and Black women are the real victims of the WNBA discourse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former ESPN anchor Elle Duncan called the discourse surrounding the WNBA<\/a> \u201ctoxic as hell\u201d and claimed that Black women are the target.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like open season to dunk on Black women because we do not have protection. Because no one cares. Because we are low-hanging fruit,\u201d Duncan said of the WNBA discourse during a discussion with Front Office Sports on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is very easy to dunk on us since we are, I would say, outside of transgender people<\/a>, the most marginalized of the marginalized groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

FORMER ESPN ANCHOR SMEARS CAITLIN CLARK FANS WITH SWEEPING, FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM | MATT CALKINS<\/a><\/p>\n

Duncan, a highly peculiar individual, then accused \u201copportunists\u201d of latching on to Caitlin Clark as a means of diminishing Black and queer women.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s twofold for them\u2014so you get to lift this one person up, and you get to, ultimately, reduce everybody else that isn\u2019t her to nothing,\u201d Duncan said.<\/p>\n

At this point, you probably expect us to respond to the examples Duncan provided to support her claims about Black women in America and the WNBA. Unfortunately, we cannot. Duncan didn\u2019t provide any.<\/p>\n

On the surface, I reject her premise.<\/p>\n

She says Black women lack protection, yet her own career suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n

ESPN hired Duncan after she was arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) in April 2013. She then repeatedly used ESPN\u2019s sports programming to make personal political statements.<\/p>\n

She reportedly lobbied behind the scenes to have the company remove Sage Steele from a social justice special in 2020 over concerns about Steele\u2019s \u201cBlackness,\u201d whatever that means. Steele was removed.<\/p>\n

On at least two occasions, Duncan interrupted the network\u2019s sports coverage to protest legislation.<\/p>\n

She first called for a moment of silence in response to Florida\u2019s so-called \u201cDon\u2019t Say Gay\u201d bill. She later used the SportsCenter set to condemn the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to return abortion policy to the states, calling on fathers to support their daughters\u2019 ability to obtain abortions.<\/p>\n

Last year, she again ventured into political commentary on ESPN, declaring that \u201ceveryone\u201d should adore and love former first lady Michelle Obama. Imagine the reaction if an ESPN anchor had instructed viewers that \u201ceveryone\u201d should adore and love first lady Melania Trump.<\/p>\n

Yet ESPN did not discipline Duncan or distance itself from her commentary, as it did Steele after she discussed political and social issues in 2021.<\/p>\n

By that standard, Duncan appeared quite protected at ESPN.<\/p>\n

Despite all of that, Netflix has since hired her to anchor its sports coverage. Talk about privilege.<\/p>\n

THE CRAIG CARTON SHOW\u2013UNFILTERED, UNAPOLOGETIC AND UNMISSABLE. DOWNLOAD HIS DAILY PODCAST NOW!<\/a><\/p>\n

I also reject the notion that Black women lack protection in the WNBA, a league composed predominantly of black women.<\/p>\n

Recently, A\u2019ja Wilson charged aggressively toward a fan in the stands and avoided a suspension. DiJonai Carrington also avoided discipline after clotheslining Sophie Cunningham this summer and later accusing the WNBA of racism on social media from the locker room.<\/p>\n

Black women are also routinely afforded the benefit of the doubt by the media during WNBA controversies. ESPN\u2019s primary WNBA studio show features an all-black female panel and has often drawn criticism for holding Clark to a different standard than black players.<\/p>\n

Further, it\u2019s difficult to take Duncan seriously when she laments the toxicity surrounding WNBA coverage. Duncan was among the media figures who helped politicize the league when Clark arrived.<\/p>\n

She was initially ESPN\u2019s lead WNBA host, but was hardly a neutral observer. Duncan repeatedly shamed Clark over the supposed racism of anonymous online trolls, as if Clark were somehow responsible for them.<\/p>\n

She has continued to stoke the same divisions since joining Netflix.<\/p>\n

This summer, Duncan suggested Clark bore some responsibility<\/a> for a wildly inappropriate USA Today column in which the author invoked Emmett Till while warning that Clark\u2019s silence in the face of online criticism could endanger black women.<\/p>\n

The racialization of the WNBA has never been particularly difficult to trace. Most people have been afraid to say where much of it originated.<\/p>\n

Clark is a straight White woman from Iowa who entered a predominantly black league with a level of fame no WNBA player had ever possessed. Players and media figures, many of whom were Black women, met her arrival with unmistakable resentment.<\/p>\n

Some explicitly attributed her popularity to white privilege. Others invoked the \u201cgreat White hope\u201d trope to explain her appeal.<\/p>\n

Elle Duncan, A\u2019ja Wilson, DiJonai Carrington, Angel Reese, Monica McNutt, Cindy Brunson, Chiney Ogwumike, Sheryl Swoopes, and others are not innocent bystanders to the toxic WNBA discourse they now condemn. They have been among its most prominent participants.<\/p>\n

In many of the controversies that have defined the league\u2019s culture war, they have been the aggressors, not the targets.<\/p>\n

Duncan and others now want to reverse that sequence of events. They want the backlash against their own divisive rhetoric and behavior to serve as proof that black women were the victims all along.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a convenient revision of what actually happened.<\/p>\n

WNBA discourse is \u201ctoxic as hell\u201d in large part because a straight white woman from Iowa transcended the league, and too many people around the sport could not accept her success without filtering it through race, sexuality, and privilege.<\/p>\n

Rather than treat Clark\u2019s popularity as a historic opportunity for women\u2019s basketball, they treated it as a grievance. They framed her fame as \u201cwhite privilege.\u201d They called her fans \u201cracists\u201d for defending her.<\/p>\n

Such dishonest framework guaranteed resentment. It also guaranteed backlash.<\/p>\n

Rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n

The likes of Elle Duncan have done far more to poison the conversation surrounding the WNBA than Clark or her fans have.<\/p>\n

She did so again by describing the very people stirring the resentment as the victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former ESPN anchor Elle Duncan called the discourse surrounding the WNBA \u201ctoxic as hell\u201d and claimed that Black…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":882585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-882584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}