Interesting.
A couple things.
“This despicable cartoon tried and failed to diminish the greatness & grace of @serenawilliams. Racism in any form is unacceptable,” civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson tweeted on Monday.
Serena is in general graceful and great. And one thing shouldn't define her. But her behavior in that match just was not graceful.
Some of it is like pretending to be graceful or spinning it (like she berates him and tells him he's a thief for following the rules correctly .. not graceful .. but then by trying to turn it into a social justice and equality issue, it can kind of deflect and distract, and she can sound graceful talking about equality but still was not graceful on the court that day.)
So I think the cartoon is more on point than this quote or similar quotes would have you believe.
As far as whether it's racist, it's hard to say. There's no way to be in the artist's mind and know what his motivations were, of course.
On first glance I don't see why it would be racist, it seems like just a caricature. But I don't know enough about the "Sambo" term they mention. And so if someone looked at that and had the opinion that it seems racist, I respect the perspective and consider that it could be right.
In general with these things, I wish there was more room for shades of gray. I tend to see it as some % chance or degree of likelihood or possibility that race was being expressed. It would be one of the infinite different things being expressed. And then you can factor that in to what you think of the artist or the newspaper. But it seems hard to know definitively one way or the other whether racism was in there.
Honestly, I'm not buying the racist thing.
I'm black. If someone does a caricature of me, do I expect to look Caucasian?
Plus, the hair is right and Serena has her fair share of bulging muscles from exercises and swinging the racket.
The only thing they got wrong is stomping the racket. But hey,it still leads to a broken racket.
From what I see, Serena Williams is flexing her muscles. She wants to feel like she's still in charge. Like she's still relevant despite her loss. She wins the US Open, she's got the media attention. She loses the US Open, claims she was treated unfairly and she gets the media attention.
You know, I also think she wants the championship to mean less to Naomi Osaka: like it wasn't a fair game. I guess someone needs a lesson on losing.
And then there are her cult followers. Serena Williams can never do wrong in their eyes. Add that to the black folks who believe every successful black person is going to be treated unfairly by whites and you catch my drift.
Playing the victim is simply her way of dealing with an unexpected failure.
That's it. I'm feeling drowsy from my medication. I'm out
Ya, I feel like that's basically it. It would be hard to identify racism with much confidence, because a caricature will just always look silly and ridiculous.
Ya, as great as she is I bet it's like she never wants to give up an edge, she doesn't like being bettered in a grand slam final.
I'm sure it's mostly all subconscious. But losing probably conjures up some feeling of "victim" in its own right, like in her mind she isn't supposed to lose. And so then it kind of is a vicious cycle when she starts having run ins with the ref.