Kim, thanks for your comments.

First, you most certainly don’t have to agree with me about Caster.

I do, however, need to clarify. I’ve written about the Women’s Soccer Team elsewhere. This isn’t an article about ALL women, or ALL women in sports. This was a highly specific article about certain Black women in sports, and ONLY that, and the article needs to be seen only in that light. The argument that this is all women’s struggles (of course it is) sounds like the argument made to Black Lives Matter: All Lives Matter. Kindly, not the point. Because one of the lanes I swim in is diversity in sports, this is a piece I care about in particular. I am concerned about fairness for pay in the WNBA and the soccer leagues. The commercial sports structure does indeed suck for all women. But this wasn’t that article.

I don’t argue your point at all. But I have long fought those battles about women in sports, fairness, etc. for years. These are of course women’s struggles. But when you add Black skin on top of their sex, it takes on a whole other level of difficulty. That was my point. Had Biles been white, I doubt the scoring would have been the same. Therein lies the problem.

You and I likely agree on most of these things, but with respect, this article strictly speaks to the specific discrimination that Black female athletes experience. It is different, and I am hardly the only journalist writing about it. One of those stories is linked in my piece, the one about Williams. As I write about and have been in the diversity space for years, that angle has real interest for me. I don’t expect everyone to agree, and I am well aware that Castor’s specific situation brings up a lot of feelings for many. I don’t suffer that about her, but that doesn’t make anyone right or wrong. We’re just different, and she is being punished for being different. THAT is wrong.

These issues are vast, and there are many aspects to them. I chose to write about something very specific because of a few articles on Biles. I’m not in the market to take on the entire sports complex, and my article shouldn’t bee seen in that light. That doesn’t make your points invalid at all, Kim, it just means that for this piece, I took a very specific focus. Thanks again.