About that 'Toon' of Serena by Mark Knight.

[sheshe2]

I don’t think that Mark Knight sat down with his 64 Crayola super pack with hatred in his heart for Serena Williams. I honestly believe that, in Knight’s mind’s eye, that is actually how he sees Serena—as a hulking, brutish simian rampaging in front of the world.

Which is racist and sexist.

A man is allowed an infinite number of fuses to blow. The top three tennis players in the world—Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic—have all smashed their tennis racquets in fits of anger. In 2009, Roger Federer, considered to be the greatest men’s tennis player who ever existed, told an umpire: “I don’t give a shit what he [the line judge] says. Don’t fucking tell me the rules.”

snip

And not only does Knight’s drawing portray Serena with undertones of classic racial stereotypes, including the apelike stance and oversized pink lips reminiscent of the coon caricature and Sambo cartoons, but he included a pacifier in the drawing, presumably to indicate Serena’s childish actions. You’d never know, from this cartoon, that Naomi Osaka is actually two inches taller than Williams.

It is also revealing that Knight chose to illustrate Osaka as a blonde, fair-skinned damn-near white woman whose complexion is the same as the umpire’s. Unintentional or not, the juxtaposition is clear: Naomi is the quiet, questioning protagonist who, along with the genteel official, is opposed by the brooding behemoth, Serena Williams.

snip

Maybe Knight genuinely doesn’t know he has a prejudiced and sexist view of the world. Perhaps he hasn’t had his bones tested for bigotry yet. It is believable that Mark and the Herald Sun thought they were providing much-needed, insightful commentary that the world’s greatest athlete couldn’t keep her composure even though she has been castigated and marginalized for her gender, wardrobe, hair, husband, body and even her skin color and continues to kick ass even with a whole human being inside her.

Read More; https://www.theroot.com/why-the-serena-williams-cartoon-is-racist-sexist-trash-1828970379

The tune is at the link. I won't post it again. Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic—have all smashed their tennis racquets in fits of anger as did Serena and they went for the most part uncensored. I read that one was fined about 1K. Serena 17K. See the difference in the fines and no out rage for their actions.

Do you see the difference, not just the fines but the most vile toon a Murdoch owed paper could publish.

[guillaumeb]

1. And the caption,

where Ms. Osaka is portrayed as saying, in effect, can you let her win, diminishes Williams' incredible accomplishments. Almost like the racist meme that non-whites generally need some form of preferential admission to qualify for college or jobs.

Recommended.

[sheshe2]

6. Exactly, guillaumeb.

Demeaning Serena's amazing accomplishments.

I feel badly for both of them. They both cried at the end.

[The Polack MSgt]

2. Good goddamn. That anyone could pretend

That cartoon isn't racist and expect no laughter pointed their way is mind boggling

The facial features lips and hair are all straight out of minstrel show advertising and Sambo drawings.

Also pissing me off?

It's not just regarding this cartoon, but the whole media blitz regarding Naomi Osaka and her family - Can you guys please acknowledge that the Osaka sisters didn't spring into the world fully formed when an old lady cut open a giant peach as if this is the Japanese Fairytale?


Please throw an occasional mention to her father - who taught them the game.

I'm sure you leaving him out is in no way racist - only racists would assume it was

[Arkansas Granny]

3. Bullshit excuses for an inexcusable cartoon. It was racist, sexist and offensive.

[Tipperary]

4. Nadal has never smashed a racket. He was taught not to at an early age by his uncle.

Last edited Tue Sep 11, 2018, 07:01 PM - Edit history (1)

If you know of a time he did, please cite it and I will stand corrected.

(I’ll just wait for your response)

[disenfranchised]

9. You can go to 4:35 in this youtube video

[link:

|

I'm not sure if it is a smash, but he hits the court with his racket in anger.

The rest of the video proves the point that all sorts of revered players smash rackets...maybe Nadal is more restrained than most.

[sheshe2]

10. Didn't break it.

Yet he smashed it.

http://www.tennisnow.com/Blogs/NET-POSTS/October-2014/Video-Video-Evidence-of-Rafael-Nadal-(Sort-of)-Sm.aspx

[Me.]

5. The Thing About That Fine

is they didn't even think about it..the boom was so immediate I don't see how it could've been discussed with any depth or insight. Also noticed how the International Tennis Federation jumped to Ramos' defense immediately, cause, doncha know they have to keep their credibility intact. Sally Jenkins wrote a really good piece about all this which I will find and post.

Here...

“Chair umpire Carlos Ramos managed to rob not one but two players in the women’s U.S. Open final. Nobody has ever seen anything like it: An umpire so wrecked a big occasion that both players, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams alike, wound up distraught with tears streaming down their faces during the trophy presentation and an incensed crowd screamed boos at the court. Ramos took what began as a minor infraction and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis, all because he couldn’t take a woman speaking sharply to him.

Williams abused her racket, but Ramos did something far uglier: He abused his authority. Champions get heated — it’s their nature to burn. All good umpires in every sport understand that the heart of their job is to help temper the moment, to turn the dial down, not up, and to be quiet stewards of the event rather than to let their own temper play a role in determining the outcome. Instead, Ramos made himself the chief player in the women’s final. He marred Osaka’s first Grand Slam title and one of Williams’s last bids for all-time greatness. Over what? A tone of voice. Male players have sworn and cursed at the top of their lungs, hurled and blasted their equipment into shards, and never been penalized as Williams was in the second set of the U.S. Open final.”…cont…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tennis/at-us-open-power-of-serena-williams-and-naomi-osaka-is-overshadowed-by-an-umpires-power-play/2018/09/08/edbf46c8-b3b4-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html?utm_term=.dc1ff9c25103

[sheshe2]

11. Yes, Me.

An umpire so wrecked a big occasion that both players, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams alike, wound up distraught with tears streaming down their faces during the trophy presentation and an incensed crowd screamed boos at the court. Ramos took what began as a minor infraction and turned it into one of the nastiest and most emotional controversies in the history of tennis, all because he couldn’t take a woman speaking sharply to him.

Both in tears.

[Nitram]

7. I agree. Those who defend the cartoon because of free speech, and pass it off as artistic

exaggeration are missing the bigger picture entirely.

[Loki Liesmith]

8. The cartoon is garbage

Serena’s punishment was deserved and proportionate.

Both can be true.

[Awsi Dooger]

28. Both are true and Serena continues to be a terrible loser

And especially at the US Open, as detailed in this excellent USA Today column from 2015. Serena's defenders should read it but the vast majority won't have the guts to read it, because it clashes with their preferred victim's role. The comparisons to Federer incidents are particularly laughable. This column was written after Serena had an upset defeat in the 2015 US Open. Instead of facing the press and complimenting her opponent, Serena was her typical self when things don't go well at the US Open. She stormed out of the media room. Federer had an equally devastating loss but patiently fielded questions in three languages.

The lead paragraph is fantastic, and foreshadowed how 2018 would play out:

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/09/serena-williams-sore-loser-grand-slam-us-open-roberta-vinci

"Serena Williams is the worst kind of loser — the one who wants to bask in the adulation of an adoring media when she wins, then acts put out when she has to answer to the same press after she loses. Look up to Serena for her athleticism, for her power, for her courage, for her tenacity and for being the greatest female athlete of a generation. But don’t look up to her sportsmanship. It’s her weakest link. Everyone has them.

"Serena is 44-3 at the U.S. Open since 2008, a mark which includes four dominant title wins. But those three losses are all memorable in their own way..."

<snip>

"Despite being given multiple opportunities to apologize over the years, Serena has refused to do so, except in the perfunctory way of apologizing to people who may have been offended, not directly to the persons who were certainly offended: the two women she threatened, however flippantly."

[Reader Rabbit]

33. Why would a white, male perspective have any value in this instance?

Those who built the system and benefit from the systemic racism and sexism are hardly the go-to people for opinions on this issue.

Kinda like letting men have any opinion or say in what a woman does with her own body.

[Perseus]

12. Newton's Third Law...

An action creates a reaction...

I wish Serena had behaved as it is demanded of a champion, because none of these things would be happening.

REACTION: an action performed or a feeling experienced in response to a situation or event.

You can criticize everyone who has reacted to Serena's tantrum during the final of the US Open, but she brought it onto herself. She is a great champion, and a very likable person when she behaves, and during interviews, but what she did last Saturday was not good, no matter what the judges have/have not done when Federer said this, Nadal did that, Djokivic broke the racquet, etc, etc. there is NO JUSTIFICATION for her behaviour, people need to stop trying to find justifications, excuses for her behaviour.

Would the fans had booed the winner during the greatest moment of her life as of yet in her tennis career? Would the cartoonist draw that awful cartoon? etc., etc.? No, none of that would have happened. Can you imagine how Ozaka felt, how she must feel now about this horrible controversy that Serena created? Think about it, Serena is not the victim here, the victims are the umpire who was doing his job, and the winner whose moment of glory was diminished by the actions of her opponent.

She did wrong to herself, to her fans, to the umpire, to the sport, and to her opponent.

Many people remember her tantrum when she threatened the lines woman to shove the tennis ball up her throat, they will remember this as well, and that is not what a champion of her stature wants.

I bet not many of you remember the unfair call she suffered at a US Open in a quarter final against Jennifer Capriati...And that day, she new she had been treated unfair, but she took it and showed class in a defeat she knew she didn't deserve, or that at least they took the chance from her of winning the match.

That is the Serena who should show up to a tennis match all the time.

[The Polack MSgt]

13. I was never a world class competitor in anything

But I played Football and I wrestled - Nothing Serena said or did would've been in any way out of the ordinary in either sport at any level above PeeWee.


Ms Capriati showed class for accepting a mistake without complaint?

Dude, that ain't an admirable trait in any competitor. Perhaps that acquiescence is why J. Capriati never lived up to her considerable physical gifts.

Perhaps the fire that lead Ms. Williams to protest A BULLSHIT CALL BY AN OVERBEARING ASSHOLE who was over reacting and over officiating is why Serena only needs one name.

I'm sorry, but the replay shows your shot to be out of bounds

[sheshe2]

21. Thank you, MSgt.

I am to tired to respond.

[brer cat]

31. +++

[dlk]

14. Misogyny & Racism Run So Deep, Many Have a Complete Blind Spot to their Biases & Often Seem "Normal"

[byronius]

15. It is a horrible window to his soul that he didn't flinch, or reconsider, or have any doubts.

Just put it out there. Without a clue.

Sometimes people with an Ugly Inside can't hide it. They get swept up and speak their truth without realizing that it is the truth of the Ugly Inside, which reveals far more about the internal landscape of the speaker than anything else.

His message is completely lost in his own foul hatred. His is the truth of the Sick and Bad. He will never recover from it -- well, maybe. There's a few Black Swan Redemptions.

A few.

The clothing change. Period. #$%ing ridiculous.

[grantcart]

16. Kicked

[Prof.Higgins]

17. Photo of Legend Serena while on the court. The opposite of racist Knight toon. Truth matters.

[LAS14]

18. How the hell can Osaka be blond??? What's going on here????? nt

[sheshe2]

22. Interesting...

Here hair color and complexation changed overnight.

[MadDAsHell]

32. These days, I'm not sure there's a good way to show race in a cartoon, period.

If people think you exaggerated features, you’re racist. If people think you understated features, you’re whitewashing.

If I was a cartoonist, I’d probably draw everyone looking the exact same and just put their names above them.

[LAS14]

19. Wow!!!! This is so telling!!!!!

A man is allowed an infinite number of fuses to blow. The top three tennis players in the world—Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic—have all smashed their tennis racquets in fits of anger. In 2009, Roger Federer, considered to be the greatest men’s tennis player who ever existed, told an umpire: “I don’t give a shit what he [the line judge] says. Don’t fucking tell me the rules.”

[flibbitygiblets]

20. If only the were a clinical test for racism, sexism

Like a CAT scan...
But there isn't. Still. we know it when we see it.

And while her behavior wasn't exemplary, the way she was treated was not only a double standard, it was a clear message: "Know your place".

Managers, judges, indeed all people in positions of power MUST be trained to understand that women, particularly black women, have been hearing that message their whole lives. Have some goddamn empathy.

[Prof.Higgins]

23. NAZI Germany poster on "Degenerate Music". Look familiar?

Poster for NAZI event one year before WW II.


https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*xREbqLEJIzz0_rsEEaEB9A.jpeg

[Prof.Higgins]

24. Alas. Poster link won't work. Titled "Entartete Musik" N/t

[The Polack MSgt]

25. I got it to work by-

Copying and pasting into a new page.

For some reason only the first half of the link you posted was highlighted as a hyperlink - you have to copy all the text

[DonCoquixote]

26. why is Naomi Osaka drawn as a blonde?

Seriously, she is a half haitian, by NO means a blonder. She is back enough to get harssed by cops. So why is this cartoonist drawing her like a blonde?

[sheshe2]

27. Racist

To say she is whiter and therefore better than Serena. She is not and I feel for the tears she and Serena wept at the awarding of the cup. Both in tears and both in pain for what happened. Both are women of color. Both aware of what happened.

[Atticus]

29. There's really nothing to discuss. There is no need to attempt to "consider both sides". There is

only naked in-your-face racism in that cartoon. To argue otherwise is to insult everyone to whom your argument is directed.

[ismnotwasm]

30. He's a racist pos

There are, apparently, a fuck ton of white people who wont recognize racism, don’t care to identify it unless it’s in words, and are too privileged/lazy make the slightest attempt and push back
at any attempt to expand the conversation, in other words, racism is what THEY say it is, not what the people who suffer from the direct effects