Look, if the choice is between living in a society where we completely deny racism and misogyny are alive and well and occasionally inserting accusations of them into situations where they do not exist, I'll gladly choose the latter. But as an ardent tennis fan for more than 40 years, I must say I'm growing a bit tired of well-intentioned people who don't know much about the sport misapplying their "woke" playbook to it ONLY when Serena Williams is involved. If you want to complain that tennis is too stuffy, fine. But you must understand that no one is persecuting this billionaire woman of color. Decades before Serena returned to Paris, cisgender white female Anne White (a blonde!)
received similar treatment when she wore a "cat suit" at Wimbledon in 1985. If you want to say it was gratuitous of the French Tennis Federation to make this announcement two months after the event, one could argue that it was far more respectful than what Wimbledon did to White, who was forced to change during a mid-match rain delay whereas Serena was allowed to wear hers throughout the tournament. Similarly cisgender white male Jurij Rodionov of Austria was reprimanded on-court and
forced to change his unmentionables when he wore (virtually unnoticeable) blue undies at Wimbledon and so forth. But this is the game of tennis, a sport Andy Roddick said sometimes needs to "get out of its own way." It's been uptight with all of its players forever. How long before the uninitiated wake up one morning and tell me Andre Agassi was harassed in the 1990s about his hair and clothing because he is an Arab?
Wanna talk about humiliating?
Kudos to Serena for now trying to
de-escalate the situation -- although adding the "blood clot" detail only
after the fact sure smells like a sympathy ploy with a hint of a persecution complex. (Which is understandable: even superstars have feelings and want the public to be on their side.) Serena readily admits the Grand Slams "have a right to do what they want to do" and that the French Tennis Federation was NOT told about the said health benefits of her sartorial selection, going so far as to say that the FTF would have been FINE with her choice HAD THEY KNOWN. (How is this unreasonable in any way?) Ditto for her pregnancy: I don't remember one of my forward-thinking friends raising hell when cisgender white females Kim Clijsters and Victoria Azarenka -- both former No. 1 players with blond hair(!) -- et al. were also unseeded when they returned from having babies. But then when the same rules are applied to Serena, it’s suddenly a personal slight. Again, if you think the policies are unfair, then lobby for change. But stop trying to make everything about race that isn’t. We have more than enough real problems in that department. All of this reeks of virtue signaling -- and if you really want to put your "wokeness" to good use where tennis is concerned, why don't you speak up about income inequality in the game? Do Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams really need to make $3.6 million for winning a major instead of $1 million when up-and-coming players are paid so little they have to sleep in their cars just to pursue their dreams? Oh, wait. Why stick your neck out on that when you know it won't get you a thousand likes on Facebook. There are a lot of reasons to be on #TeamSerena: Her unparalleled talent, athleticism, resilience, competitiveness, etc. But none of them have anything to do with these conspiracy theories spawned from worthwhile underlying principles that have been aggressively misapplied. It's great that we're on the lookout for racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, ageism and so on. But progressives are smarter than this imaginary scandal and we can -- and must -- do better.
UPDATE:
Here is yet
another example of the tennis establishment screwing up. But again, if this had happened to Serena it would’ve been blown into an international episode about tennis officials "being disgusted by her curvy black body," when it fact it's just the sport not getting it right once more.
