Many would include Serena Williams on their list of all-time great athletes, but she believes her status as a black woman prevents her from being perceived as the best.
Williams sat down with rapper and actor Common for a recently aired special on ESPN by The Undefeated. The two had a fully fleshed out discussion, but among the most impactful topics had to do with her gender: “I think being a woman is just a whole new set of problems from society that you have to deal with, as well as being black, so it’s a lot to deal with — and especially lately,” she admitted.
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“I’ve been able to speak up for women’s rights because I think that gets lost in colour, or gets lost in cultures. Women make up so much of this world, and, yeah, if I were a man, I would have 100 percent been considered the greatest ever a long time ago.”
She described what it was like growing up as a black woman: “[My parents] always wanted us to be proud of who we are and who we were. A lot of black people, unfortunately, especially growing up, are discouraged, like, ‘You don’t look good’ or ‘Your hair is not pretty’ or ‘Your skin’s too dark.’ We were always told to love ourselves. My dad always said you have to know your history, and if you know your past, you can have a great future.”
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The holder of 38 major tennis titles continues: “Like that poem that Maya Angelou said, that we are the hope and the dream of a slave. If you think about what the slave had to go through, and then the life that we are privileged to live — I wouldn’t want to be any other colour. There’s no other race, to me, that has such a tough history for hundreds and hundreds of years, and only the strong survive, so we were the strongest and the most mentally tough, and I’m really proud to wear this colour every single day of my life.”
Despite what others may say, Nike is fully on-board with labelling Williams as the world’s greatest athlete — as evident by this advertisement from earlier in the year:
