Abstract
This chapter examines the perception and treatment of two black American female athletes: basketball player Brittney Griner and tennis player Serena Williams. Described by their competitors, the media, and the public as possessing an unnatural physicality and embodying masculine traits that give them an “unfair advantage,” this discussion considers how their athletic performance/excellence interacts with the presumed obviousness of the intelligibility of their race-sex-gender difference to elicit a “high anxiety” that is expressed as anti-black misogyny, homophobia, and gendered racism. Douglas argues that the contemporary politics of black female embodiment cannot be adequately understood outside of consideration of the histories of slavery and imperialism and the attendant discourses of race, sexuality and gender that were based on the classification of black women as property.
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Notes
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- 2.
Although I do not detail the perception and treatment of black South African Caster Semenya following her stunning victory in the women’s 800 metres at the 2009 World Track and Field Championships in Berlin, I would argue that the intrusive and aggressive questioning of the 18-year old runner’s identity represents sex-gender specific forms of anti-blackness that confront black women in the public sphere. That is, the facts of Semenya’s black femaleness were perceived as a threat that warranted the denial of the right and protection of confidentiality. However, while the presumed un/intelligibility of Semenya’s performance and embodiment reflects meaningful points of similarity and difference that demonstrate how conceptions of humanness are simultaneously racialized, engendered, and spatialized, a critical interrogation of the suspicion and rejection of Semenya’s self-identification and racial gender expression is beyond the existing parameters of this project. Zine Magubane (2014) addresses some of these issues in her article, “Spectacles and Scholarship: Caster Semenya, Intersex Studies, and the Problem of Race in Feminist Theory.”
- 3.
In a discussion of the politics of racism and sexism Dr. David Leonard documented tweets posted about Williams following her fifth Wimbledon victory in 2012, observing that she was continually described as a gorilla on social media.
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Keys’ mother is white and her father black; in a recent interview Keys stated that while she is “right in the middle,” she does not identify as “African American” or white, saying “I’m just me. I’m Madison.” (Toomey 2015, para. 9).
- 5.
Griner’s mother was diagnosed with lupus at the start of her college career; she removed herself from consideration for the team in large part to spend time with her mother. She was a member of the U. S. team at the Rio 2016 games.
- 6.
This remark reflects the constant reference to the tone of Griner’s voice. Similar examples can be found on YouTube posts and online responses to mass media articles about her. Accessed on November https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wij2LVJVQQg
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Douglas, D.D. (2019). Dis’qualified! Serena Williams and Brittney Griner: Black Female Athletes and the Politics of the Im/Possible. In: Essed, P., Farquharson, K., Pillay, K., White, E.J. (eds) Relating Worlds of Racism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78990-3_13
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