White privilege. An accusation that triggers multitudes of white people in America as if you had insulted their mother. Mention racism, and people may debate you. Mention discrimination, and people may even listen. But say the words “white privilege”, and suddenly defenses go up, outrage erupts, and people start explaining why privilege couldn’t possibly have anything to do with what everyone just witnessed with their own eyes.
Which brings us to DiJonai Carrington and Sophie Cunningham.
In Saturday’s WNBA game between Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever, Carrington was ejected after being assessed a Flagrant 2 for making contact with Cunningham’s head and neck area while attempting to defend her in transition. Carrington, who is Black, maintained she was making a play on the ball and didn’t intentionally hit Cunningham, who is white. Even Cunningham’s coach at the Fever, Stephanie White, said she did not believe Carrington intentionally went out to hurt Cunningham.
Carrington acknowledged she should have been penalized for the foul. But after her ejection, she went on social media and posted those two words many white people seem to fear so much: “WHITE PRIVILEGE”.
Predictably, Carrington’s words became as controversial as the foul itself. But instead of dismissing Carrington’s accusation, we should ask why she posted the words that she did – she has said they had nothing to do with the officiating decision itself. What happens when Cunningham, a white woman, is the aggressor, and what happens when she is the “victim”?
We’ve already seen the first scenario. In June 2025, Cunningham committed a Flagrant 2 foul against Connecticut Sun guard Jacy Sheldon. Cunningham wrapped Sheldon up as she drove toward the basket, sent her to the floor, and ignited an altercation. Cunningham was correctly ejected and fined by the WNBA.
If we are going to discuss racial double standards, we shouldn’t manipulate facts. Cunningham was ejected in 2025, just as Carrington was ejected in 2026. The referees treated both players the same – as Carrington herself appeared to suggest. Instead, the white privilege is found in what happened next.
As my co-host on The Collision podcast, Chuck Modi, pointed out after Cunningham’s 2025 foul, a significant portion of the public didn’t transform her into a dangerous menace threatening the integrity of women’s basketball. Instead, she was lauded as an enforcer. She was the teammate willing to protect Caitlin Clark, a player whom many on the right see as a delicate white flower who needs protecting at all costs. Cunningham also became immensely marketable. Her TikTok following exploded from 300,000 to over one million, and she was flooded with lucrative marketing opportunities.
Ring partnered with Cunningham in an advertisement that explicitly played off her image as the Fever’s “protector”. The campaign converted the symbolism of her retaliatory foul into a branding opportunity: Cunningham protects her teammates; Ring protects her home.
Think about that. A white player is ejected, and emerges with exponentially more followers, an “enforcer” identity, and lucrative endorsements.
Now imagine if Carrington had been flooded with endorsement deals built around being an “enforcer” after her foul on Cunningham. Would America think that was cute? Would television personalities laugh and celebrate her toughness? Or would she be described with words like “dangerous”, “dirty” and “thug”?
That question isn’t hypothetical, either. Look at what happened when Carrington fouled Cunningham.
Carrington’s foul was immediately framed by commentators as something larger than basketball. Cunningham was portrayed not simply as the recipient of a Flagrant 2, but as another white WNBA player being victimized by an increasingly dangerous culture within the league. We’ve heard similar rhetoric surrounding Clark for years: opponents aren’t merely fouling her; they are targeting her, jealous of her, and trying to hurt her. The racial subtext matters because the villains in this narrative are disproportionately Black women, while the white players like Clark and Cunningham are portrayed as in need of protection.
Then the Carrington-Cunningham incident went somewhere very strange: Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, got involved. Uthmeier said he would be willing to charge players with assault and battery if they committed hard fouls in Florida.
This is, of course, ridiculous, and Uthmeier – no doubt grandstanding for a certain demographic of conservative voters – knows it. Quite apart from the fact that Florida doesn’t have an WNBA team, we are talking about professional basketball. Hard fouls have existed since Dr James Naismith hung a peach basket on a wall. Players have been clotheslined, elbowed, shoved, and involved in fights. Flagrant fouls exist precisely because sports already have mechanisms to distinguish basketball contact from excessive contact. Yet suddenly, we are discussing criminal prosecution.
Would we be having that conversation if Cunningham had fouled Carrington? We don’t have to guess. When Cunningham committed her retaliatory Flagrant 2 against Jacy Sheldon, where was Uthmeier? Where were the threats of assault charges, the politicians warning the WNBA, or the television segments asking if Black women were safe from prowling white women?
That’s what privilege looks like. When Cunningham fouls an opponent, she’s an enforcer. When Carrington does the same, she’s a danger.
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This isn’t the first time Cunningham has become a cultural phenomenon. In June, she pointed at Phoenix Mercury’s DeWanna Bonner during an on-court confrontation. The image exploded across social media, accumulating tens of millions of views as Cunningham’s point became a meme. People described it as hilarious, petty, and iconic – and there’s no denying it was entertaining.
But in considering white privilege, I posted an image on social media of Cunningham as a Black WNBA player and asked: How would it be viewed if the roles were reversed? If a Black player followed a white opponent around the court, staring her down and pointing in her face for 20 seconds. Would she still be called adorable? Or would she be described as threatening, aggressive, classless, and hostile?
That’s why conversations about white privilege cannot stop at whether two players received the same foul classification on the scorecard.
We could test this. Take every comparable WNBA flagrant foul over the last several seasons involving contact to the head or neck. Separate the incidents by the race of the offending player and the race of the recipient. Examine the headlines and social media posts. How frequently do the words “hard foul” come up versus “cheap shot”, “brutal”, “assault”, “targeted”, or “clobbered”?
That would be a far more meaningful investigation of white privilege than screaming about playing “the race card.”
Privilege isn’t always receiving something someone else didn’t. Sometimes privilege is being granted innocence of interpretation. It’s having your aggression interpreted as toughness, your confrontation as personality, your retaliation as loyalty, your defiance as humor, and your anger as passion. Meanwhile, someone else’s aggression becomes violence, confrontation becomes hostility, retaliation becomes assault, and anger becomes evidence that she is dangerous.
White privilege doesn’t require Cunningham to ask for it or be racist. It doesn’t require every referee, journalist, or politician to consciously think: “She’s white, so I’m going to treat her differently”. Privilege operates through assumptions, sympathy, and framing – through whose aggression gets contextualized and whose gets criminalized.
So when Carrington talks about white privilege, instead of becoming enraged, America should examine why those two words make people angrier than the double standard she’s asking them to examine. The question isn’t simply whether white privilege exists in the WNBA. The real question is: How much more evidence do people need before they’re willing to admit that it does?
