Paige Bueckers ‘White Privilege’ Remarks Reveal You Must Be Woke To Survive In The WNBA

Paige Bueckers is endearing herself to the WNBA community in the worst way possible. 

In last month’s WNBA Draft, the UConn Huskies superstar went No. 1 overall to the Dallas Wings. She has kept busy in the time leading up to her first rookie season, making several media appearances and doing interviews with large publications, one of which was TIME Magazine.

In the interview, she apologized for something that doesn’t exist and something that she doesn’t have: white privilege. Evidently, she believes that such privilege has been a massive contributor to her rise to stardom, and that Black players still don’t get enough coverage.

“It’s still an issue, every single day,” Bueckers told TIME in an interview released today regarding her belief that Black women are under-covered in the WNBA. “There’s not ever equal coverage.” 

“There’s white privilege every single day that I see,” she continued when asked about her own success. “I feel like I’ve worked extremely hard, blessed by God. But I do think there’s more opportunities for me. I feel like even just marketability, people tend to favor white people, white males, white women. I think it should be equal opportunity. I feel like there is privilege to what I have, and to what all white people have. I recognize that, I want to counteract that with the way I go about my business.”

Caitlin Clark Made Similar Comments In 2024

Ugh, not this again. 

Statements like this from Bueckers aren’t entirely new. At the 2021 ESPY’s, she said Black women across all sports weren’t getting covered enough.

This is a tired and old narrative, and so is the assumption that white athletes – Bueckers or anyone else – are famous because of their skin color.

Bueckers is talented, that’s why she’s famous. That’s why she was the top pick in the draft. That’s why she helped Connecticut to the NCAA title. It’s not because of her skin color. 

If it feels like we’ve heard this from a WNBA player before, it’s because we have. 

This league, and some of the media that cover it, have an incredible way of shaming white players for their success.  They did it to Caitlin Clark in her rookie season. 

Clark took the league by storm last season. Her impact on the game on and off the court earned her TIME Magazines Athlete of the Year honors. And in that profile, Clark sounded an awful lot like Bueckers does, claiming that being white helped her rise to fame and that she needed to highlight Black players more.

“I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,” Clark said. “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, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.” 

It’s becoming more and more evident that if you are white, want to survive in the league, and not be labeled as an outcast, you have to do something that shows you’re woke.

You could advocate for LGBT rights, say you hate America, push the “gender wage gap” narrative, or, like Bueckers, say you’re successful because you have white privilege. Any one of these will do, they don’t care. You just have to do one – or preferably more – to join the club. Bueckers got ahead of the game in 2021. Now she’s paying a double portion.

Bueckers might have said this to save herself from suffering the treatment Clark faced last year, or because she actually believes it. Either way, it’s sad that a white player has to do something like this to save her skin in the WNBA.

Maybe it’s not the white players who have the privilege in the league after all.