From the Files of the Black Fantastic: The Serena Williams Olympic Gold Medal C-Walk

Serena Williams and the Politics of Hate(rs)

Serena Williams and the Politics of Hate(rs)

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

Following a first-round victory in the Brisbane International tournament, Serena Williams expressed her sentiments about tennis, sport, and her labor of unlove.   “I mean, I don't love tennis today, but I'm here, and I can't live without it … so I'm still here and I don't want to go anywhere any time soon," she explained. “It's not that I've fallen out of love; I've actually never liked sports, and I never understood how I became an athlete. I don't like working out; I don't like anything that has to do with working physically.”  Williams comments, not surprisingly, elicited widespread commentary, most of which used her confession as a source of criticism and demonization.

In “Woe is Serena: Tennis star says she doesn’t love tennis,” Chris Chase criticizes Williams as narcissistic and otherwise incapable of being self-reflective and self-critical.  While acknowledging her candor, he uses that candor as a source of condemnation:

From one view, her candor could be seen as refreshing. Here's a top athlete discussing the delicate balance of passion and obligation and fear of the unknown. She's revealing herself to the press, something she rarely has in the past. Then you step back and realize Serena has the least self-awareness of any great athlete of the past decade. Two years later, she can't bring herself to acknowledge that she was wrong to threaten a lineswoman at the U.S. Open. She'll likely never admit her actions in last year's U.S. Open final crossed the line. Unless she gained some insight in the past four months, these quotes are selfish nonsense.

Chase, unwilling to limit the criticisms to the quote, rehashes and recycles those previous incidences that in his mind provide context for understanding Serena’s dislike of tennis.  In other words, just as she violated the rules of tennis, just as she has been unable to apologize for her past missed deeds, and just as she hasn’t been able to acknowledge her own faults, these comments are construed as evidence of her deficiencies as a person and athlete.  Chase goes on to argue:

 

Nobody is surprised Serena doesn't like tennis. Like Andre Agassi before her, she seems to only love the winning  and is willing to put up with what it takes to get there. The grind doesn't interest her much. These aren't new insights into her soul. The underlying tone isn't that Serena is a reluctant sports hero, it's that she's able to be so much better than the rest of the tour without caring about the game like they do. Her "I don't love tennis" quote isn't a revelation, it's a self-congratulatory declaration. It's as if she's saying, "Just imagine what I could do if I cared."

Pete Bodo, with “The real question facing Serena Williams,” expresses a bit more sympathy given Williams’ litany of injuries.   Yet, he still concludes: “Serena's problem appears to be that she likes the reward (celebrity and money) but not the process. She would like to win the Australian title and any number of other tournaments, but she hates having to go through the motions – you know, the long practice sessions, the diet, the gym workouts and even that messy business of playing matches. It's not a good problem to have, at least not for an athlete.”  Beyond the efforts to link her comments to selfishness and a sense of victimhood, several commentaries link her disinterest with tennis to her diverse interests (fashion specifically), as if that is a shortcoming. 

More instructively and disturbingly are the comments that are found alongside many of the articles.  Here are a few examples

Scar City: It shows what an idiot she really is. Because if it weren't for sport, she'd be sitting on her increasingly fat bum, watching the shopping channel, buying cheap junk, because she became too fat to leave the house !....(and I have no doubt her expensive "Tastes" are as bad as anyone else's poor tastes).........She's vile !

 

DanielaCG: No amount of shopping or trying to act feminine could change the fact that she looks like a beast!

etweinberg: How ungrateful can one person be? I would do anything to have that kind of natural talent in a professional sport. Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? "Awww, Serena....you don't like your job that you get paid millions of dollars to do. Poor, poor girl....."  Considering the way the economy is right now, with all the social unrest because of it.....pretty bad timing, I'd say.

Elijabeam: Serena's movement reminds me of a cow grazing over a filed for grass, but what do you expect at 30 if you don't practice or train?? She has taken soo much integrity away from the sport, it's nice to not see so many double standards anymore!!

Chris.Klarner: She plays because she's built like a man and can over power the other woman playing. She's a fat piece of trash and proved it with her comment.

Mslewis: The fact that Serena does not like tennis has not been much of a secret for a very long time. She has been out of shape and listless for years now and the only reason she wins matches is because she's bigger and hits harder than most of the women.  When she is ahead she looks   totally bored and goes through the motions, but when her opponent shows some spark and beats up on her, Serena just gives in.  (See: U.S. Open 2011 final)

I believe Serena hangs around because her "acting" career hasn't worked out nor has her "designing" career, so what else will keep her in the spotlight . . . tennis.  Either that or she has run out of money because she and Venus support her large family of hangers on and she needs to continue to play for the money she gets from exhibitions, endorsements, etc.

Her father said years ago that he hoped Serena and Venus would retire before they turned 30.  Guess that hasn't worked out the way he thought.  Whatever!  Cry me a river.

What is striking about the comments and several of the commentaries as well, is the demonization of Serena Williams.  Focusing on her body (reinforced by the many pictures that sexualize Williams), her attitude, and her shortcomings as a player, the responses pathologize Williams.  “The Williams sisters have been criticized for lacking ‘commitment’ by refusing to conform to the Spartan training regime of professional tennis, restricting their playing schedules, having too many ‘off-court interests’ in acting, music, product endorsements, fashion and interior design, and their Jehovah’s Witness religion” (McKay and Johnson).  Her comments here are merely positioned as evidence for the longstanding criticism.

The subtext is even more instructive with so much focus on her body.  For many, Williams is a wasted talent, as someone whose laziness, lack of work ethnic, limited dedication, and absent focus has precluded her from reaching her greatness.  The ample discussion about her body as evidence of her lack of commitment illustrates the profound ways that these comments are used to authenticate the narrative of Serena Williams as failure.  This is nothing new as tennis commentators and fans alike have long criticized her as fat, out-of-shape, and otherwise lack commitment to be great. “The Williams sisters also have been subjected to the carping critical gaze that both structures and is a key discursive theme of ‘pornographic eroticism’,” writes James McKay and Helen Johnson.  Similarly, Delia Douglas argues, a “particular version of blackness” is advanced within the representations of the Williams sisters.  We see the “essentialist logic of racial difference, which has long sought to mark the black body as inherently different from other bodies.  Characterizations of their style of play rely on ‘a very ancient grammar’ of black physicality to explain their athletic success”

What also guides these comments is the ways in which Williams has been celebrated as evidence of the American Dream - because of tennis she was able to secure tremendous wealth and success, otherwise unavailable to her.  The anger and condemnation embodies this belief that without sports Serena Williams would be working at McDonalds or some other minimum wage job.  Guided by narratives of race and class, Williams is thus reimagined as ungrateful, as disrespectful to what the game “has given her.”  In many respects, this explains the very different reaction to the similar comments from Andre Agassi.  Agassi, as white male, is seen to have had many options in life to secure the American Dream, whereas Williams is render incapable of success outside the realm of sport prompting this sort of demonization.   

McKay and Johnson offer important analysis in this regard, noting how the long history of demonization is very much connected to a narrative of the American Dream

They have been constructed within a ‘ghetto-to-glory’ narrative: a journalist referred to their ascent as a ‘fairy tale, that astonishing narrative of the ‘‘ghetto Cinderellas’’ ’ (Adams, 2005), one described Venus as a former ‘teenage curio from a Los Angeles ghetto’ (Muscat, 2007), and another stated that, ‘Only in America would Venus have risen from her cradle of crack dealers and grunge courts to contest the women’s singles final at Wimbledon’ (Mott, 2000). Patton (2001, p. 122) refers to these sorts of narratives as ‘an Africanized version of the Horatio Alger story in which athletics provides a route out of the ghetto’.

The reactionary discourse and the outrage that has surrounded Serena’s recent comments is a testament to the ways in which the Williams sisters have been imagined “an Africanized version of the Horatio Alger story in which athletics provides a route out of the ghetto’.”  Her purported refusal to accept and be grateful for the fantasy narrative is the source of outrage.  Her refusal to substantiate the narrative of sport as great equalizer compels the demonization.   

Clearly the outrage directed at Serena Williams reflects a systemic erasure of the labor of athletes.  Whether in reference to collegiate or professional athletes, dominant narratives ubiquitously erase the labor and the conditions of labor under which athletes work.  By imagining sport as game, fun, and hobby, the hard work, the dedication, the sacrifice, the pain, and exploitation are all rendered invisible.  “The truth is, sports is labor, most of it invisible. (Even the visible labor -- weightlifting, workouts, wearisome travel -- is mostly invisible to the public.),” writes Steve Rushin.  “When a guy is sitting on a stool, staring into space in a state of semi-dress, he is almost always working. This is the kind of work done by a starting pitcher on game day, when nobody goes near him, or by a writer jackknifed over his keyboard, nibbling his thumbnail to a nubbin.”  The denied work of athletes is exacerbated by race and gender given the ways in which white supremacy and patriarchy leaves the work of black women invisible.

The invisibility and erasure is quite evident with both the shock and outrage over Serena Williams’ recent confession.  Whereas others see tennis as sport, game, activity, hobby, Serena makes clear that tennis is labor; it is handwork; it is injury; in many regards it is an assault on her subjectivity. Tennis, a job, ain’t nothing but work.  In reminding people that tennis is a job, a tough one that she doesn’t like and has never liked, Williams powerfully challenges those who see her identity as determined by her profession. 

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness will be published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.

“Shut Up and Play:” Racism, Sexism and “Unattractive” Realities of American Culture

“Shut Up and Play:” Racism, Sexism and “Unattractive” Realities of American Culture

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

My anger and frustration following yesterday’s tennis match has nothing to do with the match itself.  While pulling for Serena Williams and disappointed by her defeat, the surprising loss did little to damper my spirits.  What has inspired my ire has been the media’s yet again troubling treatment of Serena Williams.

Following the match and in response to her confrontation with the match umpire (see here for details and video), commentators have taken her to task, deploying racialized and gendered criticism.  Described as “petulant,” going “bonkers,” as “a stereotypical Ugly American”and as someone whose “ego” led to a “tirade” the media tone has rendered what appeared to be a tame and minor confrontation into a spectacle that rehashes longstanding stereotypes about black women as childish, emotional, lacking self-control, and otherwise angry.  In other instances, Williams has been demonized for her “outburst” and “menacing behavior,” for “losing her cool” during an “Ugly US Open meltdown” and the “the menacing tone of her remarks.”  Mary Carillo referred to Serena’s behavior as that of an “ass clown.”

The references to her tone and demeanor as menacing, given the ways in which white supremacist discourse has pathologized and rendered African American as cultural, physical, and economic menaces are particularly revealing.  “Racial logic has advanced a link between the legibility of black bodies, and a racial being,” argues Delia Douglas in “To be Young, Gifted, Black and Female:  A Meditation on the Cultural Politics at Play in Representations of Venus and Serena Williams.”  Noting, “that black bodies have historically been designated as the site and source of pathology,” Douglas makes clear that “behaviour and habits are seen as symptomatic of these racial distinctions.”

The hyperbolic and racially and gendered rhetoric is encapsulated by a column from George Vecesey in The New York Times

As she stormed at the chair umpire during a changeover, Williams was reverting to her vicious outburst at a line official that caused her to be disqualified at match point in a semifinal in 2009, the last time Williams was here.” “But at what point does comportment, sportsmanship, become part of the measure of a great champion?” “The tantrum early in the second set caused many in the crowd to boo the decision, delaying the next point. Stosur kept her cool, and Williams never showed a trace of those couple of hard hits. She could have gone out with dignity on an evening when she did not have her best game. Instead, she called the chair umpire a hater, and later professed not to remember a word of it.

Irrespective of the exaggerating and demonizing rhetoric, Serena Williams’ confrontation of the umpire was tame; while angry with a suspect call and unwilling to capitulate to authority merely because of custom, she was clearly composed, calm, and collective; there was no “outburst;” she did not “lose her cool” nor was anything about her behavior “menacing.”   

Even the USTA has concluded that the “controversy” was much ado about nothing, fining Williams $2,000 dollars.  Explaining the fine, it announced:

US Open Tournament Referee Brian Earley has fined Serena Williams $2,000 following the code violation issued for verbal abuse during the women’s singles final. This fine is consistent with similar offenses at Grand Slam events. As with all fines at the US Open, the monies levied are provided to the Grand Slam Development Fund which develops tennis programs around the world.

After independently reviewing the incident which served as the basis for the code violation, and taking into account the level of fine imposed by the US Open referee, the Grand Slam Committee Director has determined that Ms. Williams’ conduct, while verbally abusive, does not rise to the level of a major offense under the Grand Slam Code of Conduct.

Noting the existence of “similar offenses” during the course of all Grand Slam events, the USTA acknowledges the banality of the behavior from Serena Williams. 

Williams has been positioned as yet another black athlete who may have the athletic talent, but lacks the mental toughness and commitment needed to excel on the biggest stages.  More significantly, the post-match commentaries reveal the powerful ways that race and gender operate within American culture.   Her blackness and femininity, especially in the context of the white world of tennis, overdetermines her positioning within a sporting context.  This moment illustrates the profound impact of both race and gender on Serena Williams, a fact often erased by both popular and academic discourses.  According to Delia Douglas, “The failure to consider the ways in which sport is both an engendering and racializing institution has lead to myriad distortions, as well as the marginalization and oversimplification of black women’s experiences in sport.”   As such, her stardom, her success, and the specifics of the incident does not insulate her from criticism and condemnation, but in fact contributes to the acceptability in fans and commentators alike symbolically shouting and yelling, “Shut up and play.”

To understand the reaction is to understand a larger history involving Serena Williams.  Two days before the finals match, William C. Rhoden, in a video commentary entitled “Embracing Serena,” argued that Serena hasn’t been accepted as “a great American story.” Citing a certain level of “ambivalence” and a refusal to celebrate the “resilience” and the “will” exhibited by the Williams sisters, Rhoden highlights the ways in which cultural citizenship has been denied to the Williams sisters; better said, he points to the racial double standards and the ways in which race and gender overdetermine the manner in which the Williams sisters are positioned and confined within the national landscape.  On cue, commenters (before and after the match) provided evidence of Rhoden’s argument, referring to Serena Williams as a “psychopath,” immature, as a “poor sport,” as an embarrassment,” as a “hater,” as “out-of-control,” “unattractive inside,” as “disgraceful” and a “poor loser,” illustrating not only a level vitriol but the “continuance of racism” and sexism “in the new millennium” (Spencer 2004).  The 2011 U.S. Open was like the 2009 U.S. Open, the 2001 Indian Wells tournament and countless other years where fans and commentators alike subjected Serena and Venus to the logics white racism and sexism all while denying the continued significance of both.   

  

The continued relevance of race and gender are evident in other ways. We can see it with the constant references to her body (Jason Whitlock once refereed to her as an “unsightly layer of thick, muscled blubber, a byproduct of her unwillingness to commit to a training regimen and diet that would have her at the top of her game year-round”) and the ubiquitous references to her physicality, strength and power.  “Black bodies have long been objects of scrutiny, the recipients of inordinate attention and discussion for over a century.  Black bodies were seen as the site and source of black pathology, as boundaries against which one could determine acceptable sexuality, femininity and morality (Giddings, 1984; Gilman, 1985),” writes Douglas.  “Historically, white supremacist racial logic has long relied on ‘the use of a dichotomous code that creates a chain of correspondences both between the physical and the cultural, and between intellectual and cognitive characteristics’” (Hall, 1997; p. 290). 

The rhetorical descriptors long used to describe the Williams sisters and the hyper focus on her “menacing” body following yesterday’s match illustrate the ways in which race and gender operate through the dissection and demonization of Serena’s body. We see it in the dissection, commentary, and surveillance of both their clothing and hair choices.  

We see how race and gender matters in the available narratives. We see it with the narrative choices that depict the Williams sisters as “ghetto Cinderellas’” as worthy of celebration because tennis (whiteness) saved them from the “cradle of crack dealers and grunge courts” leading them to compete for championships and millions of dollars. 

Race and gender matters.  It is evident in media coverage, fan reactions, and in so many different places all of which illustrates how “sport both reinforces and reproduces the ‘persistent’, ‘resurgent’, and ‘veiled’ forms of white power that permeate society (King, Leonard & Kusz, 2007, p. 4 in McCay and Johnson 2008), What happened at the U.S. Open and what has happened in the hours that followed were just another chapter of this larger history; a history of racism and sexism within the world of tennis. 

James McCray and Helen Johnson begin their article, “Pornographic Eroticism and Sexual Grotesquerie in Representations of African American Sportswomen” by drawing a historic parallel between the treatment of Althea Gibson and Serena Williams:

“Go Back To The Cotten [sic] Plantation Nigger. (Banner in the stands when Althea Gibson walked on court to defend her US Open title in 1958)

That’s the way to do it! Hit the net like any Negro would! (Racist male heckling Serena Williams before she served at the 2007 Sony Ericsson Championships in Miami)

While illustrating the continuity of white supremacy and the fallacy of those post-racial celebrations, the shared experienced between Gibson and Williams encapsulates the dehumanizing and violent conditions that both endured and challenged during their careers.   While acknowledging differences, it points to the powerful force of racism and sexism within America life. 

Yet, it also points to the ways in which Althea Gibson and Serena Williams (as well as Venus Williams) disrupt the hegemonic whiteness of the tennis world.  To understand Serena’s (as well as Althea’s) place within the history of tennis, including this week’s events, is to understand her willingness to challenge authority and the culture of a normalized whiteness within (and beyond) tennis.   In “Refereeing Serena: Racism, Anger, and U.S. (Women’s) Tennis,” on the Crunk Feminist Collective blog, its author powerfully notes how Serena refuses to accept the confined and controlled by the overdetermining logics of racism and sexism:

Yes, I’m aware of all the ways in which her acts in this moment reinforce stereotypes of the Angry Black Woman. However, we cannot use our investment in a respectability politic which demands that Black women never show anger or emotion in the face of injustice to demand Serena’s silence. Resistance is often impolite, and frequently it demands that we skirt the rules. . . .. Serena continues to disrupt tennis spaces with her dark-skinned, powerful body, her flamboyant sartorial choices, her refusal to conform to the professional tennis obstacle course, and her willingness to get angry and show it.  That disruption is necessary—because however “right” or “wrong” it may technically be—it demonstrates that all is not well racially in tennis. Black folks—men and women—are still largely understood within a narrative of brute, undisciplined physical strength—rather than as athletes who bring both physical and intellectual skills to their game.  As long as these issues remain, tennis will continue to be “unattractive” from the inside out.  

Agreed.  While others have used this moment to “hate,” demonize, and pass judgment on Serena Williams, for me, it is reminder of the history of resistance and fortitude; yet, it is also a reminder of how my love of sports is so often polluted by the racism, sexism and “unattractive” realities of American culture. 

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.