Controversial WNBA Star’s Victimhood Claim Runs Into One Big Problem

Life is too comfortable for too many progressives these days, particularly the younger ones. Modern America offers every available comfort to them, both materially and legally. When my grandparents were coming up in the ’40s and ’50s, their options were a lot more limited — because of race, class, and wealth. A black man working his way to the top of a profession looked a lot different back then than it does now. State and federal law has endured a long tailoring process involving DEI, critical race theory, and a lot of lawsuits. We even went to war over our slavery issue, and the Civil Rights era remains one of our most hallowed movements, on the Right and the Left.

Women are able to engage in every part of civic and public life — military, law enforcement,  leadership, corporate headship, etc. Even the world of professional sports has opened up to women in a new and exciting way over the past couple of decades. Women have more access to career and income than ever before.

Even still, with all these advancements, we are treated to a nonstop litany from progressives about the hardships of their sex, race, or ethnicity. The drumbeat is always the same: We don’t have what other people have, and it’s not fair. 

Case in point: WNBA star Angel Reese. Reese recently received one of the highest honors my 8-year-old self could have ever imagined: Mattel has released an Angel Reese Barbie doll. In a press conference where she was asked about it, Reese explained it was a special moment for her. She said when she was growing up, she didn’t have access to dolls and toys that looked like her. 

Reese was born in 2002. Not 1950. Not 1970. 2002. 

Christie Barbie first dropped in the 1960s. The 1970s brought us Cara Barbie and Carla Barbie. In the 1980s, we saw a black Ken (Malibu Barbie). Black supermodels such as Tyra Banks, Naomi  Campbell, and Beverly Johnson have all had Barbies fashioned after them, all prior to Angel Reese’s birth. Tyra Banks even did a Barbie-come-to-life movie in 2000 called “Life-Size.”

Barack Obama was elected the president of the United States in 2008, just six years after Reese was born. It doesn’t get much more representative than that.

Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Why would Reese say such an absurd and easily disprovable thing in 2026? It reminds me of the time actress Jennifer Lawrence went on a podcast and said playing her “Hunger Games” character was the first time a woman had led a major action movie. Sigourney Weaver would beg to differ. 

Lawrence and Reese are victims of comfort. In a society in which victimhood is the most valuable public currency, these women and others like them face the dilemma of being extremely successful while simultaneously trying to appear oppressed. They have had opportunities most people in the world can only dream of, and those opportunities are unique to American life: movie stardom, professional athletics, millions of dollars in payments and sponsorships.

Every opportunity has been afforded to them, and they were wise enough and talented enough to take advantage of those opportunities. But the money only keeps flowing in that direction if the complaints keep flowing. Their stories aren’t all that interesting to the struggle-session crowd, so what do they do? They borrow the stories of others.  

That’s where Angel Reese is right now and why the lie slipped so easily from her mouth. Her story is uninteresting to the left-wing media. She came from a boring old nuclear family where both parents were basketball players, attended a private school and then college, and from there went straight into the WNBA. She’s been privileged from the start and had all the greatest examples and mentors from the start, but she can’t tell that story because there are no victims in it.

She can’t even tell a story about how no one in public life (or in toy life) looked like her at the time. In 2008, we were already in an era of commercial and public diversity; we need look no further than our president at the time. In 2026, the “diversity” mission is statistically complete — and then some. 

Reese grew up in the era of “representation.” She works in a business built on representation: women’s professional sports. She has a job that many young women before her could only dream of. She would have to work incredibly hard to find examples in her own life of where black people or women weren’t represented. Instead, she simply borrowed someone else’s story — the story of my grandparents, or even her own. The story of generations of activists who came before us, who had to give of their own blood, sweat, and tears to be afforded an opportunity at peace, let alone material success. She borrowed from stories that were authentically frustrating and authentically powerful. 

This is sad because Angel Reese is a truly talented and accomplished woman. There is no doubt she has worked hard to get to the top of her career. Instead of being proud of it and telling that story, she commandeers a different story because she believes it is better than her own. 

It is not. Her story is hers alone to tell, and that’s what makes her unique and her position in life so powerful. She has influence beyond the dreams of many Americans, but she chooses to lead with victimhood rather than her own journey because she doesn’t see her journey as incredible.

We have not properly taught America’s children to covet their own stories and be grateful for them. Reese tells a stolen narrative because in a culture where victimhood is prime currency, her own story is just too comfortable.

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This is republished with permission by the author. The original can be found here.

Kira Davis is a political writer, a podcaster, and the author of “Drawing Lines: Why Conservatives Must Begin to Battle Fiercely in the Arena of Ideas.”