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Black Kos, Week In Review: In tennis, Wimbledon shows its racist ass again [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-21
The gatekeepers of tennis have not exactly welcomed Black people into the sport with open arms. From Althea Gibson to the Williams Sisters and beyond, black players have faced blatant hostility from their fellow players, from officials, from administrators, from journalists, and from fans. I have often said that Serena and Venus Williams are the only two athletes I know who’ve never enjoyed home court advantage. Personally, when I see certain people fawning all over the Williams Sisters now, it makes me wanna puke. I have a long memory, you see.
I haven’t been watching a lot of tennis of late. Much as Jordan’s retiring affected basketball, Serena leaving the sport to grow her family left some of us at least a wee bit depressed. I’m just not that motivated to stay up late at night or wake up super early in the morning to catch the games anymore. And so it was that I missed the matches of the newest sensation, Clervie Ngounoue. The 16-year-old American won this year’s Junior Wimbledon title. She’s not joking. She’s truly one to watch. She also won the French Open Junior Doubles title this year.
Reasons to celebrate, right? What could she [meaning me] possibly be griping about now, you may ask. Take a look at the only picture Wimbledon’s official account disseminated about the winner of the Junior Girls Singles championship:
x The last two #Wimbledon Girls' Singles champions:
2022 - Liv Hovde 🇺🇸
2023 - Clervie Ngounoue 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/O0gYXXzh92 — Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 16, 2023
See anything wrong?
Ok. Take a look at this post for the 2022 winner of the same event:
x Remember the name 🇺🇸 🏆
Liv Hovde wins the girls' singles title with a 6-3, 6-4 victory against Luca Udvardy#Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/d8OG0OqPXx — Wimbledon (@Wimbledon) July 9, 2022
What about this year’s Boys’ Singles title?
x Where is last year winner for the Boys? pic.twitter.com/JFfwaMJecr — BarbaraT (@Barbara27541025) July 17, 2023
Glaringly obvious, isn’t it? Someone(s) decided that it would be too much to have a Black girl get all the glory for her win. Someone else had to share her moment. Sorta like the co-valedictorian phenomena cropping up around the country. The problem for Wimbledon is that, back when the tennis world all but declared war against the Williams family, Black folks had no significant social media presence. Now we do. Black Twitter is loud, proud, and not afraid to take up space. See some of the clapbacks:
x Whew...the microaggressions
This is small...seemingly innocuous...harmless, right? What difference does it make, right?
Right — Mrs Caesar Que (@MsAlphaMu) July 17, 2023
x If nothing else, you should be ashamed that this young woman and her family will have to through a thousand reactions to your MACROaggression, when she should simply be celebrating a remarkable achievement. — BombayK (@OuterBoroRoyal) July 17, 2023
Had to get in my dig:
x Somehow I don’t think you featured 2021’s champion in 2022. This is about dimming the Black girl’s shine, isn’t it? C’mon, admit it. — JoanMarDK (@JoanMarM) July 18, 2023
These entities are gonna learn to stop messing with us. This, after all, is 2023 and not 2003.
In the meantime, let’s learn a little about the young lady who is in the running to grab the baton handed off by Queen Serena. According to her website, Clervie is the daughter of Cameroonian parents and, like her idol Serena, is trained primarily by her dad. From Wiki:
Looking forward to seeing young Miss Ngounoue at the US Open.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Decades removed from that childhood, I can honestly say that, as an undergraduate at Cornell and a J.D. candidate at Yale, I met only a handful students whose upbringing resembled my own—even when putting aside the fact of my incarceration. More pointedly, the expression “I grew up in the projects” is not something I’ve heard from many Ivy Leaguers. Nearly half the students on Ivy League campuses identify as white, and roughly 8 percent identify as Black. But even among the 8 percent, it is hard to find many first-generation students whose families lived below the poverty line.
At many elite colleges, like Cornell, Yale, and Harvard, classrooms are stocked with legacy admissions and affluent students whose parents are well connected and college educated. To be sure, race-conscious admissions—which the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional last month in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard—has allowed some elite schools to achieve nominal levels of diversity. Given ongoing disparities in wealth background of students at these institutions, however, that victory has been pyrrhic. Lost in the goal of race-conscious admissions is affirmative action’s core purpose of countering the post-slavery “effects of educational deprivation and societal discrimination.” Race consciousness alone, without that remedial goal, has allowed colleges to give preference to “students of color” either from abroad or from burgeoning middle-class families, even though their ancestry may not have been as grievously affected by American slavery or Jim Crow as much as others’, or at all. In the wake of the court striking down the use of race-conscious admissions, though, there is potentially a once-in-an-era opportunity to revisit how we think about rectifying historic abuses and their resulting disparities. One avenue, written about previously by others in Slate and elsewhere, is for elite universities to focus on closing the generational wealth gap of students by considering a student’s family wealth in admissions. Another, having little to do with college admissions at all and already partially begun by the current presidential administration, is for this country to finally reinvest in the sort of working-class labor market that fueled economic success in earlier generations.
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Allegations of hazing in Northwestern’s athletic programs broadened Wednesday as attorneys said male and female athletes reported misconduct within two other sports and suggested sexual abuse and racial discrimination within the football program was so rampant that coaches knew it was happening.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said he and other attorneys have received disturbing details from former baseball and softball players at the university, in addition to growing complaints of abuse in the football program, which players described as widespread and devastating. “This is a civil rights issue for me,” said Crump, who said 50 former Northwestern athletes — male and female — have spoken to the Levin & Perconti law firm. “I think these players have the right to be respected and valued and not hazed, intimidated and retaliated.” Black football players appeared to have faced an additional layer of abuse. A lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses fired football coach Pat Fitzgerald of enabling a culture of racism, including forcing players of color to cut their hair and behave differently to be more in line with the “Wildcat Way.” “The abusive culture was especially devastating for many players of color,” said former Northwestern quarterback and receiver Lloyd Yates, who is Black. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ VP Harris condemns "revisionist history" during her keynote address at Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc’s national convention The Root: Vice President Harris Speaks Out Against Florida's Controversial New Black History Curriculum ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This week, the Florida Board of Education approved controversial new standards for teaching Black history in the state’s public schools. The move has already received criticism from the president of the NAACP and Florida’s teachers union. Now, Vice President Kamala Harris is the latest to denounce the decision. During her keynote address at Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc’s national convention on Wednesday, the Vice President spoke out against the disturbing new set of standards which includes teaching “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” “Speaking of our children, extremists pass book bans to prevent them from learning our true history – book bans in this year of our Lord 2023. And while they do this, check it out, they push forward revisionist history,” she said in a speech shared with The Root. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.” The Vice President also took time to highlight the Biden-Harris administration’s ongoing commitment to fight for American’s fundamental freedoms, including the right to vote and women’s bodily autonomy. And she called on her audience to join in the fight to protect future generations. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It has plenty of natural gas, sunshine and wind. Economist: Why Africa is poised to become a big player in energy markets
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Energy markets are being rocked by an unprecedented double-whammy. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Europe has cut energy imports from Russia, the world’s second-largest producer of natural gas and third-largest oil producer. Prices of both shot up before falling back, but anxiety persists about energy security. Meanwhile climate change is prompting a deep but uncertain shift away from fossil fuels such as oil and, eventually, gas. Europe’s politicians and industrialists worry about keeping factories humming and homes warm in the face of these challenges.
Africa may be the answer to Europe’s immediate gas problem and its longer-term carbon one. It has 13% of global gas reserves, only a touch less than the Middle East, and 7% of the world’s oil as well as vast green-energy potential. African energy could “become really central for the future for Europe—and not just for Europe,” says Claudio Descalzi, the ceo of Eni, the Italian oil major. “They have a lot—a lot—of gas, they have sun, wind…[that is] perfect for our energy transition.”
This talk is not hot air. International energy firms including Eni are dusting off or drawing up new plans to produce liquefied natural gas (lng) across the continent. Among these are moves to restart two huge lng projects that had been shelved, including a $30bn-40bn one in Tanzania and another worth $20bn in Mozambique.
The activity marks a sharp change in the prevailing mood over the past few decades, when Africa had dwindled in importance to energy markets. A continent that once provided a fifth of the world’s internationally traded lng now provides half that share. Its shares of global oil and coal production have also fallen as investors in oil, in particular, have been put off by deteriorating security in Nigeria, usually the continent’s biggest producer.
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Police unions are pushing laws to make proving abuse more difficult. Slate: The Crazily Unconstitutional New Laws Trying to Criminalize Filming Cops
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Few seem to have noticed that a dangerous legislative campaign is underway. Its aim: to shield police brutality by shutting down our cameras. On July 1, an Indiana law went into effect making it a crime to come within 25 feet of an on-duty police officer if ordered to stay back. Legislators in Florida, Louisiana, and New York have produced similar laws. Other states have promised to follow suit. Under these laws, if you come close enough to film a police officer beating someone up, there’s a good chance you’ll spend two months in jail and end up with a criminal record. In 2023 alone, the police have killed more than 500 people in the United States. Among them was Jarrell Garris, who died last week in New Rochelle, New York, after police shot him during an arrest for allegedly stealing a banana and some grapes. Garris was unarmed, and tackled by three officers, handcuffed, and shot. The police claim he was reaching for an officer’s gun. They’ve released bodycam footage that mysteriously stops just before the shooting. They want to make sure you don’t see exactly what happened. So do the new laws.
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Damien Smith was making a documentary about police brutality. But when a burglar broke into his Hollywood apartment, he didn’t hesitate to call the cops.
Smith, a filmmaker and actor, was critical of law enforcement but believed officers were necessary to fight crime. He hoped for better community policing. That was the subject of his documentary, “Searching for Officer Friendly,” which focuses on national policing trends and the militarization of police forces.
But Smith says when police arrived at his home late at night, officers tased him — not the burglar. They then placed him in the back of a squad car. He was released not long after, but not before being humiliated in front of his neighbors.
He has now filed a civil lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department.
“I’m still in shock and awe of how this transpired,” Smith said. “I’m in such fear of calling the police. … Look what happened to me.”
The LAPD provided little information about the incident, so the narrative comes from Smith and his neighbor, who witnessed part of the encounter.
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