The news above from the front page of the New York Times reports an imminent decision which will lift federal regulations and permit big media companies to get bigger. The Times played it prominently but it was overshadowed by another story–the coming championiship tennis match betwen two sisters, Serena and Venus Williams in the US final open. It is an exciting showdown and millions will watch it worldwide, as they should. But a story by Dennis Childs from The Black World website as circulated on the Black Radical Congress site says that the media is missing a key dimension of the story:

What is most revealing regarding CBS’s coverage of bothsemi-final matches today is that they refused to mentionthat the import of the prospective “sister final” has to dowith more than the fact that the contestants are related –that the miracle of their accomplishment underlines theentire history of racial subjection, segregation, and socialdivision which constitutes the very fabric of “American”history/present.

All of you, i presume, are familiar with the manner in whichthe Williams sisters, along with their father Richard, havebeen demonized in the US media ever since their ascension upthe ranks of the tennis world. In one particular instance apopular nation-wide radio personality — Jim Rome –referred to the sisters as “Predator 1 & Predator 2″ citingwhat he viewed as their unattractive personality on and offthe court; this comment is of course fraught with anensemble of racist ascriptions having to do with theostensible unattractiveness — i.e. ALIEN — phenotypicaland metaphysical aspects of blackness — labels that havereigned in Euro-American discourse for centuries.

The question that the media will refuse to ask is why is itsuch a miracle that two Black sisters are meeting in a majortennis final? Why are we so enthusiastic and yet so shocked?For those of us familiar with how general social inequityunder a racist context has always seeped into the sociologyof sport, the answer is all-too clear. Tennis has alwaysbeen one of those global terrains that has been kept beyondthe horizon of racially and economically repressed peoples.A recent headline in Sports Illustrated bespeaks the levelto which white paranoia regarding an imminent influx intoall major sports by Black people has translated into aquarantining of select sports such as golf, tennis, hockey,and most winter sports: the headline read, “What EverHappened to the White Athlete?”

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