Every Serena Williams win comes with a side of disgusting racism and sexism
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Serena Williams beat Lucie Safarova to win the French Open Saturday. Her reward, at least on social media, came in the form of some of the same racist and sexist comments that have followed her for her entire career.
In the moments surrounding her win, Williams was compared to an animal, likened to a man, and deemed frightening and horrifyingly unattractive.One Twitter user who wrote that Williams "looks like a gorilla, and sounds like a gorilla when she grunts while hitting the ball. In conclusion, she is a gorilla." And another described her as "so unbelievably dominant...and manly". ESPN sports commentator Bomani Jones responded to those reactions — as well as to the ones that dismissed them as subjective commentary — with a series of tweets..
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What people who tried to insist that these were merely innocent, individual assessments of Williams' looks didn't understand was that none of this was new, and none of it was random.
Indian Wells and beyond
At the 2001 BNP Paribas Open tournament in Indian Wells, California, Serena and Venus Williams were booed by fans who accused them of match fixing when Venus withdrew from a scheduled semifinal match. And then, according to the Williams family, things got worse:
"When Venus and I were walking down the stairs to our seats, people kept calling me '******," her father and coach Richard Williams told USA Today at the time. One man, he said, threatened, "I wish it was '75; we'd skin you alive.'
Serena boycotted the event for over a decades, only returning this year.
But the most recent commentary is a reminder that that didn't mark an end to the racialized, sexualized, dehumanizing comments about her. Nearly impossible to imagine being made about any of her peers, they're a genre unto themselves, offering a case study on how biases make their way into media coverage. As James McKay and Helen Johnson write in a 2008 article published in Social Identities, about what they called the "pornographic eroticism and sexual grotesquerie in representations of African American sportswomen," even so-called complimentary commentary about Williams' athleticism is often grounded in stereotypes about black people (animalistic and aggressive) and black women specifically (masculine, unattractive, and overly sexual at once).
These remarks don't always take the form of explicit racial slurs or threats of bodily harm, like the ones reported at Indian Wells did. But if Williams were to boycott every tennis event at which someone made an offensive, dehumanizing reference to her body's size and shape, she'd have to quit the sport altogether.
Shameless, explicit racial stereotypes
It's true: Williams is black, she's very muscular, and she's a skilled player. But breathless commentators sometimes talk about these qualities in a way that buys into what sociologist Delia Douglas, in an article on the Williams sisters published in 2004 by theSociology of Sport Online, called "the essentialist logic of racial difference, which has long sought to mark the black body as inherently different from other bodies." The result is that Williams' athleticism is attributed to her ethnicity.
Dr. Peter Larkins, in an apparent attempt to compliment Williams, contributed his medical opinion in an interview with Australia's Herald Sun for a 2006 piece that compared her fitness to a competitor's. "It is the African-American race," he explained. "They just have this huge gluteal strength ... Jennifer Capriati was clearly out of shape and overweight. With Serena, that's her physique and genetics."
This thinking is part of a tradition Douglas dubbed the "ancient grammar of black physicality."
Ironically, Williams' mistakes have also been attributed to her race. At the 2007 Sony Ericsson Championship in Miami, a heckler was ejected from the stands after yelling at Williams, "That's the way to do it! Hit the net like any Negro would!"
But most of the racialized comments about Williams have been more carefully coded, rarely mentioning her ethnicity outright.
Inappropriate scrutiny and sexualization of her body's size and shape
There's no way around it: the fascination with the size and shape of parts of Williams' body that have nothing to do with her tennis skills is creepy. It's also unsurprising. Ms. Magazine's Anita Little, writing in 2012, linked the sexualization of Williams' physique to the legacy of the "Hottentot Venus," an African woman whose real name was Saartjie Baartman, who was displayed before European audiences as a freak show attraction in the 1800s. "No matter how insanely successful black women like Serena become, the legacy of the Hottentot Venus will always be ready to rear its ugly head at an opportune moment," she wrote.
THE LEGACY OF THE HOTTENTOT VENUS WILL ALWAYS BE READY TO REAR ITS UGLY HEAD
Reading some of the remarks made about Williams' curves, it would be easy to think you were privy to the observations of circus attendees gawking at an unfamiliar body, as opposed to journalists and sports commentators.
In 2002, after Williams competed at the US Open wearing a black spandex catsuit, Sunday Telegraph columnist Otis Gibson, seemingly struggling to find appropriate language in his critique of her outfit, wrote, "On some women [the catsuit] might look good. Unfortunately, some women aren't wearing it. On Serena, it only serves to accentuate a superstructure that is already bordering on the digitally enhanced and a rear end that I will attempt to sum up as discreetly as possible by simply referring to it as 'formidable.'"
In 2003, the satirical website Sportspickle published a piece that leveraged the preoccupation with this particular part of her body, in a piece starring Williams' butt as the winner of the Australian Open:
Tennis star Serena Williams cruised to a victory in the finals of Australian Open women's singles on Saturday and then dispatched her buttocks on Sunday to secure the doubles title. Serena beat her sister ... to win her fourth-straight major. On Sunday, her butt muscled its way to a 6-2, 6-1 title victory over the doubles pair of Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suarez. The feat is the first-known occurrence of a body part winning a professional athletic contest.
It's not all white observers who make these types of comments. Jason Whitlock, a black sports writer, slammed Williams in a 2009 Fox Sports column for having "chosen to smother" her beauty "in an unsightly layer of thick, muscled blubber." His main gripe, unsurprisingly, was about what he called her "oversized back pack." He explained, "I am not fundamentally opposed to junk in the trunk, although my preference is a stuffed onion over an oozing pumpkin."
This type of disgusted scrutiny has targeted Williams' breasts, too. In commentary that was demonstrably wrong, given her astronomical success in tennis, the Telegraph's Matthew Norman wrote in 2006 that they were likely to hinder her career.
Generally, I'm all for chunky sports stars ... but tennis requires a mobility Serena cannot hope to achieve while lugging around breasts that are registered to vote in a different US state from the rest of her.
In 2012, Williams' friend the Danish tennis player Caroline Wozniacki brought to life all the scrutiny of Williams' body, mocking her curves by stuffing her top and tennis skirt with towels at an exhibition match. Williams responded to those who thought the joke was in bad taste by saying, "I don't think she meant anything racist by it," but added, "If people feel [that it seems racist], she should take reason and do something different next time."
CONTINUED...
http://www.vox.com/2015/3/11/8189679/serena-williams-indian-wells-racism
I've even seen some of these terms in the article written about her here.
I have seen the same terms written about her on black female sites too.....
That shyt don't mean anything the fact of the matter is that most folks who make these comments about her are non-black folks. I have followed her career and her sisters career since they were kids. This aint nothing new these folks have hated on both those ladies since the 90s.
Hell the folks hated on their dad and called him all types of racist names as well.
These sistas go through the same mess black athletes have had to deal with over the last century when playing sports. You must have forgotten the hate mail, jersey burning, sending him racist tweets, sending death threats to him, talking about his mother, talking about how he grew up, and how folks talked bad about his wife and kids........ that Lebron got. Cause he had the nerves as a black athlete to decided and control his own destiny.
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Yep anytime blacks dominate a sport or position that whites dominated for years, bigots begin to pull out all types excuses why blacks are succeeding. It happened with Jack Johnson, Joe Lewis, Tiger Woods, the 5 black starters in college basketball that beat Kentucky, when blacks began to dominate LB, RB, DE and WR in football....and etc, etc.
Remember when Tiger was winning folks were saying his limbs are longer and that is why he dominates......
The crazy thing is these American hate on the Williams sisters and don't realize they are the best American tennis players we as a country have produced in over 30 years. All at the same time the US tennis organization did not want them or their father.
We would barely have any wins in tennis if it wasn't for these sistas. Same with Tiger they spent so much time hating on him instead of realizing the only reason folks tune in is because of him. He leaves and all that money leaves as well.
Folks are so racist they rather bite off their nose in spite of their face.
We would barely have any wins in tennis if it wasn't for these sistas. Same with Tiger they spent so much time hating on him instead of realizing the only reason folks tune in is because of him. He leaves and all that money leaves as well.
Folks are so racist they rather bite off their nose in spite of their face.
Read up on sports history and see how much hate Jack Johnson got. Or how much hate Joe Gilliam got. Or how much hate James Harris got. Or the Hate Hank Aaron got has he got closer and closer to breaking babe ruths record.
Whenever you are black and the first to do it or the first to dominate you will always get hate. I am just glad that Serena is mentally strong. Her father prepared her and her sister on the racism and mountains they would face and that their mother was always there for support as well.
That racism and hate is a meat grinder and can destroy you. You can rise above that and be James Harris or you can let it destroy you like Joe Gilliam.
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Serena has dated several black men, and if you think Sc00n will be dating black men thenThat girl is completely whitewashed. Not to mention that she had no problem trashing Serena to the eager white media after her fluke win over the Queen. Then the little witch had the nerve to cheer when Serena lost in the 2014 AO. Sc00n is trash.
Damn. I got some research to do.
