Caitlin Clark White privilege comment sparks intense, personal argument between Riley Gaines and Jemele Hill

Caitlin Clark’s recent comment about benefiting from White privilege in the WNBA has fueled hostile online debates since it was published in Time magazine on Tuesday. Former NCAA swimmer and OutKick host Riley Gaines got in on the action in her latest online debate with a left-wing figure. 

This time, Gaines took on journalist Jemele Hill, who has been a staunch critic of Clark and those who have given the WNBA phenom credit for elevating the league. 

Hill threw the first punch against Gaines, re-sharing a post on X, where the former swimmer criticized Clark for the comments. 

“You holler all the time about supporting and ‘protecting’ women, and yet the moment that Caitlin Clark expresses appreciation and respect for the Black women in the WNBA (many of whom she grew up watching and idolizing), suddenly you’re acting like a disappointed parent,” Hill wrote. 

Gaines quickly clapped back, responding to Hill’s post by mocking the idea of “White privilege” in the WNBA. 

“‘White privilege’ in the WNBA is literally hilarious. Maybe you’re like Sunny Hostin & think CC also has tall privilege, pretty privilege, and straight privilege,” Gaines wrote. “Theres lots of Black players in the WNBA I love [and] respect too, but I don’t admire them because they’re Black. I admire them for their game. That’s the difference.” 

Gaines then doubled-down by re-sharing Hill’s initial post with a screenshot of comments the journalist made in an interview with the Los Angeles Times back in May. In that article, Hill insisted it was “naive” to say Clark’s race as a White person and sexuality as a straight woman did not play into her popularity in the WNBA, where the vast majority of players are Black and many are lesbian. 

In that article, Hill also insisted that Clark’s popularity with those attributes are “problematic.”

“Being a long-standing professional race baiter must be SO exhausting,” Gaines quipped to Hill in response. 

In June, Hill said that the fact that Clark did not make the U.S. Paris Olympic women’s basketball team was a “good thing for her” and that her exclusion “wasn’t a snub.” Hill also criticized the media for pointing out that the WNBA’s playoff ratings dropped after Clark’s Indiana Fever were eliminated in the first round, calling the headlines “irresponsible.” 

When Clark made her latest comments about benefiting from White privilege with Time magazine, Hill made a post on X, seemingly mocking the player’s fans who disagreed. 

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“If you’re mad at something so obvious, that means you were never a real fan of hers on the WNBA, you just liked her as long as she could be your avatar to hate on Black and queer women,” Hill wrote on Wednesday. 

Then, after picking the fight with Gaines on the topic, Hill went so far as to make it personal. 

After Gaines’ comment about Hill being a professional race-baiter, Hill responded with a message mocking the former swimmer for an incident when she tied with trans athlete Lia Thomas at the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships.

“Girl, you need to thank Lia Thomas every day of your life for helping you get famous, otherwise you would have been just a decent college swimmer that no one knew. You wrote the book on grifting — not me,” Hill wrote.

Gaines’ infamous tie to Thomas in 2022 helped ignite a national conversation about biological males competing as trans athletes against women and girls. Gaines quickly became nationally-known for the incident and has devoted her platform to advocating for the protection of female athletes from trans inclusion in competition and in locker rooms. 

Gaines is also leading a lawsuit against the NCAA with other female athletes, accusing the governing body of violating their Title IX rights due to its policies on gender identity. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, details the shock Gaines and other swimmers felt when they learned they would have to share a locker room with Thomas at the 2022 championships in Atlanta.

Additionally, Gaines did not let Hill’s comment about her past slide on Thursday. 

“How deeply regressive [and] utterly misogynistic for Jemele Hill to tell me to thank a man for the platform I have. Thank him for what? Violating us in the locker room? Stealing a national title from a deserving woman? Indirectly stripping us of our 1A rights? Just say you hate women,” Gaines wrote in her response.

That was the last message that was sent in the exchange at the time of publication. 

It would not be the first time Gaines had the final say in an X debate with a left-leaning opponent. 

In a September spat with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Gaines argued the notion that Vice President Kamala Harris has done a “good job” handling the border crisis. 

Gaines ended up with the last word in that debate, as Cuban did not respond to Gaines’ thread when she brought up that Harris’ proposed border bill included funding for Ukraine and Israel and that more than 320,000 migrant children went missing while crossing the border during Harris’ handling of the border. 

Gaines also got in on a viral roast session of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. on Nov. 14, after it was discovered the congresswoman removed pronouns from her X bio. Gaines made multiple posts shredding Ocasio-Cortez a week after the congresswoman criticized Green Party vice presidential candidate Butch Ware for standing against trans athletes in women’s sports. 

Gaines took aim at Harris herself after the losing presidential candidate posted a surprise video on social media to her supporters. 

“Now do you understand why she didn’t go on Joe Rogan lol,” Gaines wrote.

Each of Gaines’ spats with the liberal figures has been met with roaring engagement from her followers. 

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