Black Women's Excellence in White Male Spaces

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by Roscoe Palm – PAIS co-founder

Most tennis players retire from the sport at the end of their careers. Serena Williams has said that she is “evolving” out of tennis. She has transcended being just another athlete, or even just another Black athlete. Serena is aware that her legacy is far more than just a sporting one. She shines brightest among a constellation of Black stars who have broken barriers of race, class, and gender. Serena Williams is the epitome of Black women’s excellence in a white male space.

To properly tell the story of the Williams sisters, one must understand the story of Arthur Ashe.

If ever a tennis player was born into circumstances made to stymie their talent, it would be Arthur Ashe. He was born in 1943 in the capital of the southern Confederacy, Richmond Virginia. It was very clear that his dedication to tennis made him one of the top young tennis players in his city.

Being good at tennis was one thing. Being Black and good at tennis was another in segregated American society. Ashe was refused permission to enter the Richmond City tournament, because of the white establishment. And that’s where the story would have ended had it not been for a Black tennis coach and activist named Robert Walter Johnson.

Johnson had previously coached Althea Gibson, the first Black woman to win a tennis Grand Slam. Gibson and Johnson faced enormous obstacles. For example, Gibson had to sleep in her car before tournaments because of racial segregation laws. She was also effectively barred from entering US Tournaments. Even though the US Tennis Association did not bar people based on ethnicity, the system of qualification for its major tournaments was designed to exclude Black people. Most of the qualifying tournaments were held at Whites Only tennis clubs. Despite this, when Althea Gibson won her first Wimbledon, she is reported to have said “Shaking hands with the Queen of England was a long way from being forced to sit in the colored section of the bus.”

Robert Johnson successfully lobbied for integrated school tennis tournaments, and Arthur Ashe never looked back. He won the US Open in 1968 but couldn’t claim the $14000 prize money on account of being an amateur.

Some institutions are wholly unreconstructed spaces. Some schools and universities, certain sports, certain professions, and some neighborhoods are reserved for White people implicitly or explicitly. The sport of tennis in the mid-sixties was one of those spaces. When Black people excel in these spaces, their Blackness is muted, and their sporting achievements are amplified. Participation in these spaces is based on race (preferably White) and class (preferably wealthy). The tiny minority of Black people who achieve entry into these spaces are then policed, until the Black individual is imbued with a certain degree of self-moderation. You can’t talk about race. Taking a knee is unpatriotic. Swimming caps that accommodate Black hair are illegal. So, the path of moderation and seeking the approval of White establishment is a well-lit path that is easier to tread than to blaze a dangerous trail through the thicket of prejudice.

That takes a toll on the individual Black woman or man, a process of attrition that takes place at a neurological and material level that is designed to alienate the Black individual from their Blackness. Arthur Ashe had been accused of being an Uncle Tom. He had previously made a statement that poverty in Black ghettos was on account of the laziness of individuals, not systemic issues. He had joined the US Army from 1966 – 1968 at a time when Mohamed Ali was sent to prison for resisting conscription. It is said that at a political meeting in Atlanta, Jesse Jackson had spotted Ashe, turned to him and said, “Hey Brother Ashe, you gotta get more outspoken”, to which Ashe replied, “I don’t do it with my mouth, I do it with my racquet.”

This was a difficult space to navigate for many Black people. Whether it’s a Black athlete in the Civil Rights period, or just the common person that must fit into White spaces on a daily basis, there is always a hidden cost to resisting the establishment. There are Colin Kaepernicks on factory floors and in organizations everywhere who have been punished for doing the right and moral thing.

And so, to Serena Williams, who along with her sister Venus Williams, had faced the struggle of being a Black interloper in a White endeavor. This was nothing new. It was the very same ringer that Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson, and countless others had been through.

In these White spaces, to be co-opted as “one of the good ones” is the ticket to being given a temporary seat at the table of institutions that have replicated their own culture, codes, and practices since slavery and colonialism. The White establishment demands silence about things that make it uncomfortable, and welcomes the platforming of issues that exonerate it of its historical crimes and derelictions. Toe this line, and perhaps it is possible to fit in with your Black skin. But even if you fit in, it is impossible to belong.

Even as she evolves out of tennis, Serena Williams was being criticized by record grand Slam holder Margaret Court. This undertone of White criticism has been the background music of Serena Williams’ career from the start.

The Williams sisters have been constantly sexualized and exoticized as a Black woman. Whenever they deigned to wear colors or styles that did not conform to the patriarchal White establishment of tennis, the Williams sisters were disciplined by the authorities, and the homogenous White subculture that orbits these establishments.

Nicole R Fleetman writes:

“The Williams sisters’ role in tennis highlights how sports, race, and convention work together to buttress ideals of gendered physicality, racialized femininity, and performative aesthetics. The sisters’ ambivalent reception in the sporting world also uncovers a serious divide in how race, gender, and physical prowess are perceived by Black fans of the sisters and the majority of White sports journalists and tennis fans. From early in the sisters’ careers journalists and critics made comments on their clothing and hairstyles (especially the signature braids and beads of their teenage years), as much as on their aggressive playing style. In particular, Serena Williams’ fashion choices on and off the court have been read as an explicit signification of difference. Even more, her sense of style has called forth a rehearsed and familiar response to what is perceived as racial excess, specifically the black female body as excess.”

Serena revealed to the world a rape culture that is implicit and ever-present in some White establishments. When she wore a catsuit to the French Open in 2018, administrators of the Grand Slam hastily banned this, even though a white woman had previously worn a catsuit with nary so much as a whisper of disapproval.

On the “scandalous” catsuit, scholar Ramona Coleman-Bell writes:

“The attention given to Williams’ catsuit is rooted in the wider historical imaginary of the Black female body in the American public consciousness. The catsuit accentuates every curve in Williams’s body, and images of her in such form-fitting gear often draw attention both to her breasts and her butt. In fact, many of the images of Williams’s body that have circulated via magazines and internet sites have focused on her extremely fit, curvaceous physique. The catsuit, with its connotations of the feline huntress, and the repetition of sexualized, radicalized iconography, works to draw attention to, and then displace, the fascination with Williams’s hyper-encoded sexuality.”

Much more than their peers, the Williams sisters had been subjected to scrutiny. When Venus Williams pulled out of a semi-final against Serena at Indian Wells, the Williams family was accused of match fixing, and were subjected to the kind of public abuse usually reserved for a public lynching, with Richard claiming that one of the spectators hurled racial invective at him and his 19 year old daughter Venus. The WTA found no evidence of match fixing whatsoever.

Serena Williams had also been subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny when it comes to drug testing. According to Deadspin:

“Williams has been tested five times so far in 2018. This total—which doesn’t include the June 14 test mission, which did not come to fruition—is more than twice that of other top American women’s tennis players. According to the USADA database, Sloane Stephens was tested once; Venus Williams was tested twice; Madison Keys was tested once; Coco Vandeweghe was tested twice; Danielle Collins was tested zero times; Alison Riske was tested zero times; Bernarda Pera was tested zero times; and Taylor Townsend was tested zero times. Williams was also tested more than any of the top five American male players.”

Scrutiny of her body doesn’t stop at sexualization and rape culture. It goes right into shaming.

Stephen Roddick of Rolling Stone wrote: “Sharapova is tall, white and blond, and, because of that, makes more money in endorsements than Serena, who is black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks that crushes Volkswagens at sports arenas”

Russian Tennis Federation Presideent Shamil Tarpischev was fined $25,000 for referring to the Venus and Serena as “the Williams brothers”.

Sid Rosenburg called Venus Williams “an animal” and said that they had a better chance of posing nude for National Geographic than Playboy. Rosenburg said that he “can’t even watch them play anymore” and “I find it disgusting. They’re just too muscular. They’re boys.”

Serena had been subjected to racial caricatures and the trope of the angry black woman. No such trope exists for White men, and such behaviour is immortalized and celebrated, as is the case of on-court tantrums by John McEnroe.

When Serena Williams pursued off-court ventures, she was scolded by former player Chris Evert, saying that those pursuits were “distractions” that were “tarnishing your legacy”. Evert continues to write “Perhaps the reason I feel so strongly about this because I wasn’t blessed with the physical gifts you possess”, another clear episode of a White person reducing Serena’s achievements to mere physicality, reducing the psychological and technical aspects of Serena’s game. This missive was never about concern from an old pro to a young pro. It was all about pairing Serena’s Blackness with some kind of “advantage” over White competitors. Would a White player’s off-court pursuits be subjected to the same scrutiny? The brutal answer is a “no”, as illustrated by the mediocrity of Anna Kournikova as a tennis player, but uncritically feted as the ideal standard for beauty, celebrity, and model professionalism.

White establishment had a problem with the aggressive style of Serena Williams, who was portrayed as a serve-and-volley power player. The men’s game had been dominated by these serve and volley players, a style that was admired. Players like Goran Ivanisevic, Pete Sampras, and John McEnroe were admired for their powerful aggressive play. Serena Williams was subtly chastised for being “too powerful”, not feminine enough, not ladylike. But this characterization of her style of play is a trope. Serena won three French Open titles on clay by evolving her baseline game. To characterize her as a “power player” is to invisibilize the full spectrum of her skillset, including her mentality and adaptability.

Serena Williams and Venus Williams made what is expected to be their final bow at the Arthur Ashe stadium. Between them they have won thirty Grand Slams, with Serena amassing twenty-three of her own.

Whereas Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson had to navigate the tumult of segregation and the Civil Rights era, the expectation would have been that they beat a smooth path for the Williams sisters, Naomi Osaka, and other Black people within the White establishment of Tennis. Unfortunately this is not the case. The Williams sisters excelled DESPITE the barriers to entry not being removed by the establishment. Even though access to opportunities in White institutions are open to all, these institutions are maintained as the preserve of Whiteness by generational cohorts of conservative racist gatekeepers.

There are a few black sports women and men who just by the simple act of excellence and achievement offend the elite colonial institutions. Just by being their own excellent Black selves in a White hegemony, they advance the cause and inspire excellence for future generations. True to herself, Serena Williams actively supported the BLM movement. Her experiences in the White space of tennis perhaps led her and many other Black sports icons to recognize that to separate politics from sport is in itself a political act, because inherent in that sanitized space is a particular worldview that is pro-White, anti-Black, anti-Woman, and anti-Poor.

That is the true legacy of Serena Williams, Venus Williams, Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson, and others. The “evolution” of Serena Williams is an important part of the revolution.