Let’s face facts here: Caitlin Clark is unpopular with a lot of people because Caitlin Clark is white.
Let’s also face another fact: The people she’s unpopular with think it’s the other way around. They believe that America is a hive of secret Klansmen who didn’t watch women’s basketball because they all hated black people, but once they could find a white person who was an interesting player, they suddenly tuned in.
We could speculate to the reason behind the projection, but the real reason behind her popularity is that the 2025 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament was basically when people started paying genuine attention to the sport outside of those who adopted fandom as a lifestyle accoutrement, kind of like a cheaper version of a Subaru with a “Coexist” bumper sticker. The political types got mad, yadda yadda yadda again, and now we have USA Today columnists accusing Caitlin Clark of being lynching-adjacent.