The Toronto Raptors decided to celebrate Women’s History Month by posting a video with players talking about why women are great. And why are women great? According to the Raptors? Because they can have babies.
The video featured Raptors stars Malachi Flynn, Precious Achiuwa, and Scottie Barnes. The trio was tasked with each giving a reason why “girls run the world.” The “run the world” theme is a play on the Beyonce song in which she says, “Girls run the world.” A trend emerged quickly as Flynn said girls “run the world” because “they are the only ones who can procreate.” Achiuwa chimed in on the same theme by saying women are great because “they birth everybody.” Perhaps sensing a need to break the trend, Barnes said girls run the world “because they are queens.”
But, too late. The damage was done.
The video was quickly deleted after the organization was inundated with tweets from angry fans accusing the organization of sexism and being tone-deaf.
On Thursday, the Raptors issued an apology for the video.
“We’re an organization that prides itself on doing the right thing when it comes to inclusion and representation, and we made a mistake [Tuesday],” Raptors officials stated. “Our sincerest apologies to our players, our staff and our fans — we’ll work to do better today and every day after.”
If the Raptors do another video, the players will probably have a script.