LSU women's basketball star Hailey Van Lith has spoken out recently about a column from The Los Angeles Times where it paints the program in a bad light and refers to the players on the team as “dirty debutantes.” She would also say that people speaking negatively about her teammates like Angel Reese and others are comments rooted in “being racist towards my teammates” according to Andrea Adelson of ESPN.
“We do have a lot of Black women on this team, and unfortunately, that bias does exist still today, and a lot of the people that are making those comments are being racist towards my teammates,” Van Lith said. “I'm in a unique situation where I see with myself, I'll talk trash and I'll get a different reaction than if Angel [Reese] talks trash. I have a duty to my teammates to have their back. Some of the words that were used in that article were very sad and upsetting.”
Van Lith stands up for teammates on LSU women's basketball team
As she said in the quote, she sees a double standard in how she as a White person gets treated when she talks trash compared to her teammates that are Black. She refers to the phrase “dirty debutantes” as having “nothing to do with sports” and that because the LSU women's basketball team are diverse, “people feel a way about it.”
“Calling us the dirty debutantes, that has nothing to do with sports. That's not motivating,” Van Lith said. “But in my opinion, I know for a fact that people see us differently because we do have a lot of Black women on our team who have an attitude and like to talk trash and people feel a way about it. At the end of the day, I'm rocking with them because they don't let that change who they are. They stay true to themselves, and so I'll have their back.”
Van Lith says she saw racism at previous school in Lousiville
There is no doubt that Van Lith is very passionate about the remarks being thrown around about the Tigers, saying that she has experienced this before in her time at Louisville where she was for the first three seasons before transferring to LSU. She mentioned how sometimes, she is the “one of the only White people on the team” and because of that, she “sees things from a different perspective.
“I've experienced it at Louisville. I've experienced it my whole life,” Van Lith said. “A lot of the times, I'm one of the only white people on the team and so I do see things from a different perspective. I think a lot of people who live in communities that everyone is like them, that's when they tend to think, ‘Oh, racism doesn't exist today.' But I have seen it and I experienced it, and I watch it happen to my teammates. I watch it happen to my friends.”
“So, when I go back home, which is a mostly white community, I do share those experiences,” Van Lith continued. “When I was in high school, they tried to cancel the Martin Luther King Jr. assembly because we didn't have enough time for it, but every other holiday we had enough time for. We were a majority white high school, so no one had a problem with it. It's my responsibility to say things when that happens because I'm in a unique position.”
Angel Reese says negative comments fuel the Tigers
In terms of Angel Reese, she has received a brunt of the hate, especially after the national title game last season where LSU beat Caitlin Clark and Iowa. Reese would point to her finger and do a “You can't see me gesture” like professional wrestler John Cena which received backlash, but Reese said the aforementioned column and other negative comments “motivates us every time.”
“It motivates us every time someone says something bad about us or crazy about us,” Reese said. “It motivates us, it makes us more hungry, it makes us want to go out there and win even more. So, I love that about our team. Being a part of LSU has just been great, and I just love it. People are going to believe and say what they want to say about you. You can't change people's perceptions of you, so I just let it be whatever it is. I mean, I don't really care.”
The Los Angeles Times column isn't the only article that has been attached to the LSU women's basketball team as The Washington Post wrote about the alleged abuse head coach Kim Mulkey does on her players. She has called out the Post multiple times and recently to the Times for writing something that was “sexist” and “evil.”
Even with all the controversy, the Tigers are in the midst of trying to win a national championship and repeating from last year's success. The LSU women's basketball team beat the UCLA bruins Saturday and will now take on Iowa and arguably the best player in the country in Caitlin Clark once again in a rematch from the national title last season Monday night in the Elite Eight.
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