A poll headline that appeared on the Los Angeles Times’ website and social media pages sparked outrage from many readers. The poll was in response to a Sports Illustrated survey that asked who should be the magazine’s sportsperson of the year.
In the Sports Illustrated poll, American Pharoah, who was the first race horse to win the American Triple Crown since 1978, received the most votes. However, the online poll did not factor in to who Sports Illustrated was going to honor, which ended up being Williams.
After Williams was awarded the title, The Los Angeles Times titled their online poll, ‘Serena Williams or American Pharoah: Who is the real sportsperson of the year?’
This created a backlash from readers, who responded through Facebook and Twitter, prompting the Times to change their title to, “Are fans right to be upset that Serena Williams beat American Pharaoh for SI Sportsperson of the Year?”
Some of the online comments from readers are below:
“You are seriously comparing a Black woman to a horse?”
“The initial poll was offensive and the explanation is equally offensive. Comparing Serena to a horse?”
“The poll. Should not. Exist. Stop treating us like we’re brand new here.”
“I’m glad it was changed, because it was both sexist and racist.”
“It doesn’t matter that you changed it. It doesn’t matter your intentions. It’s still beyond gross that you would have done it.”
“This is hardly a justification; response article misses the point. Horse vs. woman should never be up for discussion.”
“@latimes is out here asking if a Black woman or a horse should win SportsPERSON of the year. Just insulting and disgusting.”
“@latimes. Comparing @serenawilliams to a horse perpetuates age-old racist and sexist tropes that dehumanize Black women.”
An explanation of the poll was made by Angel Rodriguez, the Sports Editor of the paper. This message was posted on Twitter:
“We were reporting on the controversy and backlash from horse racing fans to SI picking Serena. In a SI.com poll, American Pharaoh won the poll. Sports Illustrated editors chose Serena as their SportsPerson of the Year. And Horse racing fans were pissed.
We wrote a story about the backlash and asked people to vote on who really should have won the award since SI.com readers thought the horse. We didn’t make the comparison. The comparison was out there already from Sports Illustrated. Our post points out the ridiculousness of SI even putting the horse in the polling.
Unfortunately, our headline, poll and tweet didn’t convey that. We fixed that. It was not our intention to compare Serena to an animal, it was to point out that some horse racing fans thought the horse should have won. I apologize for any confusion.”
Angel Rodriguez
Sports Editor
Los Angeles Times
