The artist behind the controversial cartoon of Serena Williams throwing a tantrum is not backing down after almost all of the world has called his caricature of the tennis star sexist and racist.
Current Events
Mark Knight of Australia’s Herald Sun is under fire for imagining 23-time grand slam champion Serena Williams as a Hulk-like thug throwing a tantrum — while depicting her Haitian and Japanese opponent, Naomi Osaka, as a blonde white woman.
“I saw the world’s number one tennis player have a huge hissy fit and spit the dummy,” Knight said on Tuesday. “That’s what the cartoon was about, her poor behavior on the court.
“I drew her as an African-American woman. She’s powerfully built. She wears these outrageous costumes when she plays tennis. She’s interesting to draw. I drew her as she is, as an African-American woman.”
Knight’s newspaper responded to the criticism by printing the headline “WELCOME TO PC WORLD” over a collection of the artist’s cartoons.
“If the self-appointed censors of Mark Knight get their way on his Serena Williams cartoon, our new politically correct life will be very dull indeed,” the paper wrote.
However, not everyone was amused by the newspaper’s response or Knight’s artistic license, charging that he was playing directly into old racist stereotypes.
“What we have is a bunch of people who get paid to publicly exercise their implied freedom to speech then whining when people disagree with what they have had the privilege of being paid to say,” tweeted Aboriginal playwright and actor Nakkiah Lui.
“[Williams’] humanity is stripped from her in order to accentuate her Blackness being synonymous with her anger. This is clear because Naomi Osaka is whitewashed by the cartoonist in order to drive this false binary home,” said actress and activist Kelechi Okafor.
“The cartoon plays on old and discredited images of African-American ‘sambos’: unintelligent, emotional (rather than rational) and childlike,” said Dr. Joe Street, a senior lecturer in American History at Northumbria University in England.
“I think it’s really interesting that the Herald Sun has not included really any other caricatures or cartoons of black people — either Aboriginal people or African-American people, black people of any descent,” said Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke, who is of Afro-Caribbean descent.
“What it’s (the newspaper) trying to say is that all people are caricatured, but the criticism of the Serena Williams caricature is that it’s specifically racist, and there’s a reason why the Herald Sun isn’t able to put other cartoons that they’ve reproduced of black people on the front page,” she added.
Current Events
The controversy surrounding the Serena Williams tennis match took an interesting turn on Wednesday when a cadre of umpires said they’re considering boycotting all Serena Williams tennis matches from now on, as a response to her perceived treatment of umpire Carlos Ramos.
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An official said umpires felt “not supported” by the United States Tennis Association and that Ramos was “thrown to the wolves for simply doing his job” and “not willing to be abused for it.”
However, since Serena Williams and her sister, Venus, are virtually the face of modern-day tennis, there’s no word on how these umpires will successfully boycott her matches yet remain employed and able to earn a living.
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Re: The controversy surrounding Serena and the umpire Carlos Ramos
I’m not exactly clear on what went wrong during Serena’s match against Naomi Osaka(?) My very limited understanding is that the controversy was ignited by Serena’s coach engaging in some sideline coaching, which apparently is a violation and Serena was penalized for it(?) Do I have that right?
And things rapidly went downhill from there, which resulted in Serena’s meltdown and her accusing the umpire of Sexism.
The main question I have is this – was Serena losing (or on the verge of losing) to Osaka?