Mark Naison: The Serena Williams Meltdown and the Politics of Gender and Race
[Mark Naison is a professor at Fordham University in New York.]
Because I am a huge Serena Williams fan--I think she is the most talented women player ever to pick up a racket, and also think she’s beautiful and sexy--many of my friends have asked me to comment on Serena’s disastrous outburst in the semifinals of the US Open, an event which has taken on special significance because of the racially polarized atmosphere in the country at this moment in history.
First of all, I want to put on record that as a former competitive tennis player who, like Serena ( and John McEnroe), learned the game in public parks in the inner city, I found her outburst completely understandable.
It is absolutely unheard of in a Grand Stand tournament to call a foot fault on a player during the critical stage of a match unless the player stepped way over the line when serving, which Serena did not. If her foot did touch the line it was by a very small margin, hence the line judge was guilty of the worst offense a referee can make: TAKING THE GAME AWAY FROM THE PLAYERS!
As for Serena’s response, it is certainly no worse that what John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors would have done if somebody called a foot fault on them at a comparable moment,and certainly no worse than how I would have reacted if someone called a foot fault on my daughter Sara when she was playing national tournaments ( someone would have had to escort me off the grounds in a straight jacket!).
As for the threatening nature of Serena's comments, "I feel like shoving the bleeping ball right down your throat," they are the kind of threats that I have heard many players make when they feel someone is cheating them, and which I have said, myself, on more than a few occasions. When I was playing public parks team tennis 25 years ago, I still remember telling a player from Queens after he called one of my serves "out" which was clearly in "If you ever make another call like that, I am going to shove the bleepin racket up your bleepin…!"
However, I am not a Black woman, much less a powerfully built, dark skinned , Black woman who grew up in a working class neighborhood, playing on the largest stage in my sport in front of tens of millions of people around the world. When Serena blew up at the line judge in that way, it reinforced deeply entrenched stereotypes which Black women have to deal with in this society on an almost daily basis, especially if they are--like Serena--dark skinned and thick. I can just imagine sitting in a living room, or a bar, or a tennis club lounge area with white people watching Serena, huge and menacing, standing over a much smaller middle aged Asian woman threatening to do her body harm. Forget the injustice of the call, or the understandable rage of a competitive athlete feeling the game has been taken away from them--what you have is a visual scenario which recapitulates white people’s visceral, almost physical fear of being overpowered by an angry Black person possessing superhuman strength.
Worse yet, it came at an historical moment when all too many white Americans, however bizarrely, see the Obama Presidency as a sign of "Black Domination" of the nation’s political life and are feeling engaged at their presumed displacement from their longtime position as leaders of the nation and the country’s preeminent racial group.
You can bet that in millions of living rooms around the country, many whites, with the help of conservative talk show hosts, are using Serena’s outburst, and Kanye West’s even more reprehensible explosion at the MTV Video Music Awards, as fuel for their movement to delegitimize and disrupt Barack Obama’s Presidency.
If Serena Williams didn’t realize this before her unfortunate meltdown, I am sure she realizes it now. And she needs to incorporate that understanding into everything she does, whether it is competing in sports, or endorsing products.
Let me make something clear - I am not arguing that Serena Williams needs to accommodate all her actions on the court to whether they will help or hurt Barack Obama’s presidency. She is first and foremost, a competitive athlete, and her mental and physical preparation will and should be focused on winning matches and tournaments
But I AM suggesting that Serena, as the best known Black woman athlete in the world, has to know "what time it is" and realize that the political climate in our nation, thanks to the huge and growing movement to discredit the Obama presidency, has become as racially charged as it has been at any time in our histor. Serena, like other public figures of her prominence, needs to make a careful calculation of how her actions and image play in this new historic setting.
The challenge is to do this without diluting the passion and the inner fire that has brought her to the top of her sport.
I have complete confidence that Serena Williams, who is as as smart as she is tough, will figure this out.
I expect to see her win many more Grand Slams, and never again blow up that way at a tournament referee--even when she has ample provocation.
But the rest of us also have a job to do, and that is to make sure that Serena’s meltdown does not reinforce stereotypes and prejudices that make life more difficult for Black women, or give license to those fueling the fears of white Americans that they are losing control of "their" country and they have to get Obama out of office by any means necessary.
Read entire article at WIth A Brooklyn Accent (blog of Mark Naison)
Because I am a huge Serena Williams fan--I think she is the most talented women player ever to pick up a racket, and also think she’s beautiful and sexy--many of my friends have asked me to comment on Serena’s disastrous outburst in the semifinals of the US Open, an event which has taken on special significance because of the racially polarized atmosphere in the country at this moment in history.
First of all, I want to put on record that as a former competitive tennis player who, like Serena ( and John McEnroe), learned the game in public parks in the inner city, I found her outburst completely understandable.
It is absolutely unheard of in a Grand Stand tournament to call a foot fault on a player during the critical stage of a match unless the player stepped way over the line when serving, which Serena did not. If her foot did touch the line it was by a very small margin, hence the line judge was guilty of the worst offense a referee can make: TAKING THE GAME AWAY FROM THE PLAYERS!
As for Serena’s response, it is certainly no worse that what John McEnroe or Jimmy Connors would have done if somebody called a foot fault on them at a comparable moment,and certainly no worse than how I would have reacted if someone called a foot fault on my daughter Sara when she was playing national tournaments ( someone would have had to escort me off the grounds in a straight jacket!).
As for the threatening nature of Serena's comments, "I feel like shoving the bleeping ball right down your throat," they are the kind of threats that I have heard many players make when they feel someone is cheating them, and which I have said, myself, on more than a few occasions. When I was playing public parks team tennis 25 years ago, I still remember telling a player from Queens after he called one of my serves "out" which was clearly in "If you ever make another call like that, I am going to shove the bleepin racket up your bleepin…!"
However, I am not a Black woman, much less a powerfully built, dark skinned , Black woman who grew up in a working class neighborhood, playing on the largest stage in my sport in front of tens of millions of people around the world. When Serena blew up at the line judge in that way, it reinforced deeply entrenched stereotypes which Black women have to deal with in this society on an almost daily basis, especially if they are--like Serena--dark skinned and thick. I can just imagine sitting in a living room, or a bar, or a tennis club lounge area with white people watching Serena, huge and menacing, standing over a much smaller middle aged Asian woman threatening to do her body harm. Forget the injustice of the call, or the understandable rage of a competitive athlete feeling the game has been taken away from them--what you have is a visual scenario which recapitulates white people’s visceral, almost physical fear of being overpowered by an angry Black person possessing superhuman strength.
Worse yet, it came at an historical moment when all too many white Americans, however bizarrely, see the Obama Presidency as a sign of "Black Domination" of the nation’s political life and are feeling engaged at their presumed displacement from their longtime position as leaders of the nation and the country’s preeminent racial group.
You can bet that in millions of living rooms around the country, many whites, with the help of conservative talk show hosts, are using Serena’s outburst, and Kanye West’s even more reprehensible explosion at the MTV Video Music Awards, as fuel for their movement to delegitimize and disrupt Barack Obama’s Presidency.
If Serena Williams didn’t realize this before her unfortunate meltdown, I am sure she realizes it now. And she needs to incorporate that understanding into everything she does, whether it is competing in sports, or endorsing products.
Let me make something clear - I am not arguing that Serena Williams needs to accommodate all her actions on the court to whether they will help or hurt Barack Obama’s presidency. She is first and foremost, a competitive athlete, and her mental and physical preparation will and should be focused on winning matches and tournaments
But I AM suggesting that Serena, as the best known Black woman athlete in the world, has to know "what time it is" and realize that the political climate in our nation, thanks to the huge and growing movement to discredit the Obama presidency, has become as racially charged as it has been at any time in our histor. Serena, like other public figures of her prominence, needs to make a careful calculation of how her actions and image play in this new historic setting.
The challenge is to do this without diluting the passion and the inner fire that has brought her to the top of her sport.
I have complete confidence that Serena Williams, who is as as smart as she is tough, will figure this out.
I expect to see her win many more Grand Slams, and never again blow up that way at a tournament referee--even when she has ample provocation.
But the rest of us also have a job to do, and that is to make sure that Serena’s meltdown does not reinforce stereotypes and prejudices that make life more difficult for Black women, or give license to those fueling the fears of white Americans that they are losing control of "their" country and they have to get Obama out of office by any means necessary.