Claudia Rankine's eye-opening novel Citizen continues to keep me engaged. Rankine's writing is inspiring. Each tiny passage that she has on each page gives you a different example of what black people in our country have to go through every day. Specifically through the turmoil that has taken place in Serena Williams tennis career, it makes one ponder whether racism will ever truly go away.
I have always been a huge tennis fan. My dad and I follow the tennis world together and it is a sport we have grown to love. When we watch Serena Williams play she seems to be an unstoppable force. An unstoppable force until somebody else attempts to stop her. Mariana Alves was excused from officiating any more matches on the final day of the US Open when she made five awful calls against Serena Williams. The serves and returns were "...landing, stunningly unreturned by Capriati, inside the lines, no discerning eyesight needed,"(26). It is pretty clear that Alves had something out for Serena. Officiating umpires are very good at there job and may only make one or two slight accidental errors in one match. Five errors is inexcusable. Alves and Serena never had a history before this match of disliking each other. So what made Alves make those awful calls against Serena? The only thing that it seems to come down to is the color of her skin. A few years later in the semifinals of the 2009 US Open, a line judge called a foot fault on Serena in a critical point of the match. Serena yelled at the judge,"I swear to God I'm f-ing going to take this f-ing ball and shove it down your f-ing throat, you hear that?"(29). Evidently Williams had the right to be mad in this situation. During critical points, the umpires and line judges are supposed to be more lenient and let the players play it out. On replay, it was clear that she was not even close to foot faulting but the call was unchangeable. The line judge who made the call proceeded to tell the line judge that Williams threatened to "kill her". Undoubtedly, it seems that the line judge may have emphasized William's anger because she was a threat due to her skin color.
How do we rid of this underlying racism? Serena Williams is just one black athlete that has faced issues such as this. It happens in every sport and lots of the instances go unnoticed. What actions can we take to prevent this?
When I watched the clip of the interaction between Serena and line judge, I could not believe how scared the line judge appeared. Serena was simply vocalizing her frustrations against the unfair call. Yet, the line judge thought Serena was threatening because of her skin color. I agree with your post. I think it's important to be well-informed individuals through discussion. As a result, talking about racism stops it from being an uncomfortable topic to talk about. This book does a great job of starting a dialogue.
ReplyDelete