It was 1955, and 14-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi, when he went to a grocery store. What happened at the store, exactly, has been disputed for years, but Till was accused of flirting, touching, or whistling at the proprietor, Carolyn Bryant. Several nights later, Bryant's husband, Roy, and his brother J.W. Milam went to a house belonging to Till's great-uncle. There, armed, the men abducted Till. They beat and shot Till before throwing his body into the Tallahatchie River.
Till's body was recovered three days later and returned to his hometown of Chicago, where Till's mother had a public funeral with an open casket. You can search for images online if you wish. It was an abhorrent crime.
Which is why USA TODAY sports columnist Nancy Armour should be fired for her despicable column. As my colleague Matt reported, Armour had the audacity to claim that WNBA star Caitlin Clark—who has been targeted for fouls, racial harassment, and other abuse by both her fellow players and the press—demanding the fouls against her be called is a modern-day version of what happened to Emmett Till.
In her non-apology apology, Armour blamed those of us appalled at her asinine comparison for just being too stupid to understand the point she was trying to make.
"I made an inartful comparison with the murder of Emmett Till," Armour wrote, claiming she was trying to tie the WNBA All-Star game, being held in Chicago, to that racist murder of a teenage boy. "I obviously did not provide enough context for that."
There is no "context" for that. None.
Caitlin Clark is asking that fouls against her be called as fouls, like when she was punched in the throat by Alyssa Thomas. The WNBA tacitly admitted it was a flagrant foul because Thomas was suspended for a game after public outcry. Thomas then played the victim, of course. But compare that to what the WNBA did to Toronto coach Sandy Brondello. Sandy, an Aussie, angrily told refs to call a foul on Angel Reese, saying the player was part of a "protected species."
The WNBA immediately suspended Brondello for a game; Brondello also apologized publicly and personally to Reese, and Reese played the victim, too.
The double standard is glaring, and Clark, rightly, is getting fed up with it.
In Armour's mind, demanding that players who foul her get called for fouls, perhaps leading to a one-game suspension, is the same as lynching a black boy in 1955 Mississippi. It's an appalling comparison, and one that's only meant to stoke racial tensions, demonize Clark, and make Armour feel morally superior at her next book club gathering or wine tasting.
Only a woke leftist woman could make such a connection.
But here's what really stands out to me on this: where's the Left's outrage? The Left, who see racist, Nazi dog whistles in even the most innocuous words and gestures. They got a Hispanic man, Emmanuel Cafferty, fired from his job with San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) after a pic of Cafferty cracking his knuckles outside the window of his work truck went viral on Twitter. He was accused of making the "white power" symbol.
When the Patriot Front group showed up on the Fourth of July, we were inundated with breathless, wall-to-wall coverage about America's "white supremacy" problem. These guys showed up, waved flags, and took public transportation. A picture of these likely SPLC-backed folks on the D.C. subway, surrounding a black woman, was pounced upon by the Left as the "photo of the year," as the woman sat there, peacefully and undisturbed (and it turned out she may be the actual nuisance).
The Left routinely decries white people owning ethnic food businesses, attacks cancer patients for wearing scarves on their chemo-bald heads, polices our Halloween costumes, and is constantly on the lookout for racist "microaggressions" or "cultural appropriation."
Yet when Nancy Armour takes one of the most horrific race-based crimes and uses it to make a stupid political point about the WNBA, the Left says nothing. If there are leftists calling for her firing, accusing her of being racially insensitive, of using the pain of the black community for her own agenda, it's not widespread. I spend enough time on X that I would see it.
But I see nothing.
Which shows us, once again, that for the majority of the Left, their cries of "racism" are nothing more than performative politics. Which is what Armour's column was, too, of course.
Comparing Caitlin Clark asking for fair treatment on foul calls to the actual lynching of Emmett Till is not “inartful”—it was an intentional, political, and grotesque cheapening of one of America’s most infamous racial murders for the sake of a culture-war point and pageviews. That Armour’s column drew no serious, sustained condemnation from the same people who routinely see racism in knuckle-cracking, subway photos, and in every other corner of society, only confirms what most of us already knew: for much of the progressive side, “racism” is a selective weapon, not a consistent principle. When the charge serves the narrative, it is deployed without restraint and with maximum outrage; when it does not, the silence is deafening.
