Serena Williams: An Institutional Discrimination In Claudia Rankine's Citizen

Superior Essays
Throughout its history, the United States has had countless instances where racial and ethnic tensions were overt and aggressive. For example, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s puts these tensions on display for all the world to see the harsh reality that American democracy was not protecting its minority groups like it was intended. Instead, it was acting against them to benefit the majority. American democracy was created with the intent to protect the rights of the minority from the majority. Today, the United States has come a long way from its grim past of racial segregation. However, racial and ethnic differences continue to exist in the United States. They may be minute, but they still exist and occur daily. Many people would like …show more content…
Tennis is a sport populated and for the most part dominated by white athletes. Throughout her career, Serena Williams has experienced both blatant and subtle discrimination. The words "I do not always feel colored" and "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background" explicitly articulate what Williams has faced during her career because of her skin color (Rankine 51-52). These phrases embody the racial struggles one of color might face due to their appearance in a socially dominated white society causing one to question their identity and if they belong there. After her “three-second celebratory dance on center court” Piers Morgan was going to name the victory dance “the Serena Shuffle” (Rankine 33-34). However, he learned that from the American press that it was actually a Crip Walk. When told that the dance she had performed was called a Crip Walk, a gangster dance, Williams asked if she looked like a gangster. To which Morgan responded that she did. This is an example of her addressability. A black athlete who participates in an overwhelmingly white sport is called a gangster because of a dance she performed. She made herself addressable by being a unique entity in Caucasian dominated

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