Al Duncan Makes a Fool of Himself, Says He and Black Women Are the Real Victims of WNBA Discourse
Al Duncan Calls WNBA Discourse Toxic, Claims Black Women Are Targeted, but His ESPN and Now Netflix Career Tells a Different Story
He could not stand up to the scrutiny of the national media.
Former ESPN anchor Elle Duncan called the discourse surrounding the WNBA "toxic as hell" and claimed that black women are being targeted.
"It feels like it's open season to submerge black women because we're not protected. Because nobody cares. Because we're low-hanging fruit," Duncan said of the WNBA controversy on Tuesday during a conversation with Front Office Sports.
"It's very easy to pigeonhole us because I would say outside of transgender people, we're the most marginalized group."
Former ESPN anchor smears Caitlin Clark fans with false accusations of racism | Matt Calkins
Duncan, a very queer person, then accused "opportunists" of using Caitlin Clark as a tool to diminish black and queer women.
"It's two-fold for them—so you can elevate this one person, and ultimately you can diminish everyone else who isn't them," Duncan says.
At this point, you'd 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 did not provide.
She says black women are unprotected, but her own career suggests otherwise.
ESPN hired Duncan after he was arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) in April 2013. He then repeatedly used the ESPN sports program to make personal political statements.
He reportedly lobbied behind the scenes to have the company remove Steele from a 2020 Social Justice special due to concerns about Steele's "blackness," whatever that means. Steel was removed.
On at least two occasions, Duncan interrupted the network's sports coverage in protest of the law.
He first called for a moment of silence in response to Florida's so-called "don't be gay" bill. She later used the Sports Center set to decry the Supreme Court's decision to return abortion policies to the states, urging fathers to support their daughters' ability to have an abortion.
Last year, he once again turned to political commentary on ESPN, declaring that "everyone" should love former first lady Michelle Obama. Imagine the reaction if an ESPN host instructed viewers that "everyone" should admire and love First Lady Melania Trump.
However, ESPN did not chastise Duncan or distance himself from his commentary after Steele discussed political and social issues in 2021.
By that standard, Duncan seemed quite guarded on ESPN.
Despite all that, Netflix has since hired him to broadcast its sports coverage. Talk about points
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I also reject the notion that black women are not protected in the WNBA, a league made up of predominantly black women.
Recently, Aja Wilson violently attacked a fan in the stands and avoided a ban. DeJonah Carrington also avoided discipline after locking up Sophie Cunningham this summer and later accusing the WNBA of racism on social media from the locker room.
Black women are also often given the benefit of the doubt by the media during WNBA controversies. ESPN's WNBA studio premiere features an all-black female panel and has often drawn criticism for holding Clarke to a different standard than black players.
Besides, it's hard to take Duncan seriously when he laments the toxicity of WNBA coverage. Duncan was among the media figures who helped politicize the league when Clark arrived.
He was originally ESPN's lead WNBA anchor, but he was hardly a neutral observer. Duncan repeatedly shamed Clarke for the alleged racism of anonymous online trolls, as if Clarke was somehow responsible for them.
He has continued the same controversy since joining Netflix.
This summer, Duncan suggested that Clarke was responsible for a wildly inappropriate USA Today column in which the writer used Emmett Thiel while warning that Clarke's silence in the face of online criticism could endanger black women.
The racialization of the WNBA has never been difficult to track. Many people have been afraid to say where a lot of it came from.
Clarke is a straight white woman from Iowa who entered a predominantly black league with a level of fame that no WNBA player has ever had. Players and media figures, many of them black women, met his arrival with undeniable fury.
Some explicitly attributed their popularity to white privilege. Others used the slogan "The Great White Hope" to explain her appeal.
Elle Duncan, Aja Wilson, DeeJonai Carrington, Angel Reyes, Monica McNutt, Cindy Branson, Cheney Ogwemick, Cheryl Sopes, and others are not innocent bystanders to the toxic WNBA discourse they are now denouncing. They have been among its most prominent participants.
In many of the controversies that have defined the league's culture war, they have been the aggressors, not the targets.
The Chicago Sky's DeJonah Carrington was ejected after a wild foul on the Indiana Pacers' Sophie Cunningham. (Kamil Krzaczynski/Imagn Images)
Duncan and others now want to reverse that sequence of events. They want a backlash against their own divisive rhetoric and behavior as proof that black women have been the victims all along.
This is a convenient review of what actually happened.
The WNBA discourse is largely "toxic as hell" because a straight white woman from Iowa transcended the league and many people around the sport couldn't accept her success without filtering it through race, sexuality and privilege.
Instead of seeing Clark's popularity as a historic opportunity for women's basketball, they saw it as a grievance. They considered his reputation as "white privilege." They called his fans "racists" for defending him.
Such a dishonest framework guarantees dissatisfaction. It also ensured reciprocity.
The likes of Elle Duncan have done far more to poison the conversation surrounding the WNBA than Clarke or her fans.
He did this again by describing the people who provoked the outrage as victims.
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