Why Serena Williams Is So Important
For two decades, Williams has dominated an overwhelmingly white sport, a powerful statement on black womanhood.
On Saturday morning when I dragged myself out of bed to watch Serena Williams compete for her 21st Grand Slam title at Wimbledon, I sent my mother a simple text: “Tennis?” More than a thousand miles away and one time zone behind, Mama texted back, “Yes!”
This has been our ritual since I left home nearly half a lifetime ago, just around the time it became clear that Williams Sisters were a force that would not go away quietly. My mother and I spent many lazy summer weekends watching greats like Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe. I vaguely remember watching Arthur Ashe play, and my mother always took care to point out Black players like Zina Garrison and Malivai Washington. Unlike basketball, which I also loved back then, in the heyday of Michael Jordan, tennis was an overwhelmingly white sport.
Then came the Black girls—sisters from Compton with beads and braids, playing “power tennis.” That is how sportscasters like Mary Carillo, Pam Shriver and Chris Evert derisively referred to the Sisters’ monster serves and walloping forehand winners down the line way back then. A few months younger than Venus, and a few older than Serena, I was instantly protective and proud of these young sisters the same age as me, who had entered an all-white world and dominated white women with such consistency and force, and so unapologetically, that white women’s heads spun on a regular basis.
MORE HERE: http://www.alternet.org/gender/world-only-has-ugliness-black-women-why-serena-williams-so-important?sc=fb
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