Sunday, December 6, 2015

Against a Sharp White Background

"The body is the threshold across which each objectionable call passes into consciousness - all the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience do not erase the moments lived through..."

The racism and pettiness that Serena Williams went through in her career struck me as horrendous. From horrible calls made against her to the racial slurs thrown at her during matches and (one of the most petty and racist things I have ever heard) being accused of "Crip Walking" by the media, Williams has gone through continuous racism. She is the embodiment of a black woman thrown against a white background which wants to destroy her.

When Serena fights against the racism she encounters, she is often viewed as crazy. When she yells at a referee, "I swear to God I'm fucking going to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that? I swear to God!" people think she is insane. She is not insane, though; the body has memory, and Serena remembers every injustice inflicted upon her. When she lashes out at a ref, like in this instance, she is reacting to all of the bad calls she has ever experienced. As Rankine puts it, "...this is how racism feels no matter the context - randomly the rules everyone else gets to play by no longer apply to you, and to call this out by calling out "I swear to God!" is to be called insane, crass, crazy. Bad sportsmanship."

Serena is constantly thrown against a white background and discriminated based on her black body.

4 comments:

  1. Things did seems to be a bit better towards the end of her career, but you're correct in identifying all the discrimination flung her way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can see where she lost her cool, took things too far, made a professional mistake.. But I couldn't help but feel a little satisfaction in reading that she verbally attacked one of the refs for making a bad call. The pettiness bothered me so much that I needed a little backlash from Serena Williams, and she definitely gave some.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with Sethe, meaning that we don't see as much racial discrimination against Serena now than we saw at the beginning of her career, most likely because society has grown accustomed to her during 20 year career. However, things certainly were bad when she first started out as a pro.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree with Seth and Nick. It is quite obvious that near the beginning of her career that she was discriminated against. However, I do not know if society has grown accustomed to her or that they try to make up for what she once had to face. I feel like they are almost trying to make up for what they did in the past as she gets all the praise in the world now. Not to say that she does not deserve a lot of this praise, but it definitely feels like a form of compensation.

    ReplyDelete