Natasha Cloud’s recent remarks draw a response from Enes Freedom

Washington Mystics guard Natasha Cloud is well known outside the WNBA for her activism and statements off the court. She made some statements on Twitter last Friday regarding the United States’ shortcomings, in particular to African Americans, Hispanic Americans and the LGBTQ+ communities.

There was criticism on social media when the tweet came out. If it comes from some random person with 10 followers, it’s probably not worth writing about.

But on Monday, NBA veteran and activist Enes Kanter Freedom responded to Cloud’s tweet.

Here is his entire message:

Just ask your colleague Brittney Griner how “trash” America is.

Calling America trash huh?

Let me know when your season is over, I’ll buy your ticket and we can go together to counties like China, Russia, IRAN, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, & Turkey.

Forget about calling them trash, I would like to see if you can even criticize those regimes!!

You and your family members would be thrown in jail, tortured to death, and raped.

People have NO idea how lucky and blessed they are to be in a country like America.

I’m not saying America is perfect, but trust me, you don’t wanna see the other side.

Freedom has been an advocate speaking out against autocratic (and mostly U.S.-skeptic) governments in the world, such as China, Iran and Russia. Freedom was raised by Turkish parents but was also outspoken against Turkey’s government. In fact, when Freedom was on the New York Knicks in 2019. he did not play a game in London against the Washington Wizards due to fear that the Turkish government may be out to detain him.

While Freedom certainly has good intentions behind his activism, they aren’t the same reasons as to why Cloud is active in her own right. There were articles over the Independence Day weekend that made it seem like he responded immediately to her. And I don’t think Cloud responded to Freedom yet.

If Freedom read Cloud’s tweets between last Friday and today (which can be difficult to do now given Twitter’s changes), maybe he could have also learned the context. At any rate, here is why Cloud, in her own words, wrote her original tweet last Friday. Note that these tweets were written before Freedom’s response.

So, what are we to make of it? I don’t see anything wrong with either Cloud’s or Freedom’s tweets at face value.

Cloud is right to call out domestic issues in American society, in particular those against African Americans, Hispanic Americans and the LGBTQ+ community. If you are reading her tweets with that context in mind, you wouldn’t have a problem with her original message.

And Freedom, who naturalized as an American citizen while fearing the Turkish government, is right. The United States, even given its faults, still has a fairly liberal society that many autocratic governments worldwide will not tolerate. Freedom is right from that point of view, but his tweet also didn’t address the domestic-specific issues Cloud was concerned with.