{"id":42670,"date":"2015-09-11T20:55:55","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T20:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42670"},"modified":"2015-09-13T21:01:50","modified_gmt":"2015-09-13T21:01:50","slug":"serena-williams-tiger-woods-and-racial-identity-in-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42670","title":{"rendered":"Serena Williams, Tiger Woods and racial identity in sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/tennis\/story\/_\/id\/13551475\/tiger-woods-serena-williams-racial-identity\" target=\"_blank\">Serena Williams, Tiger Woods and racial identity in sports<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN<\/a><br \/>\n2015-09-05<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MikeWiseguy\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Wise<\/a><\/strong>, Senior Writer<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/player.espn.com\/player.js?playerBrandingId=4ef8000cbaf34c1687a7d9a26fe0e89e&amp;adSetCode=91cDU6NuXTGKz3OdjOxFdAgJVtQcKJnI&amp;pcode=1kNG061cgaoolOncv54OAO1ceO-I&amp;width=576&amp;height=324&amp;externalId=espn:13548277&amp;thruParam_espn-ui[autoPlay]=false&amp;thruParam_espn-ui[playRelatedExternally]=true\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em>Mike Wise writes that Serena Williams has embraced her blackness and found a spiritual home while Tiger Woods has been proudly biracial and found a perhaps unintended kind of isolation<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t miss the term &#8220;black excellence&#8221; pulsating through <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Claudia_Rankine\" target=\"_blank\">Claudia Rankine&#8217;s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/08\/30\/magazine\/the-meaning-of-serena-williams.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">provocative story<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Serena_Williams\" target=\"_blank\">Serena Williams<\/a> in last week&#8217;s <em>New York Times<\/em> magazine. Though Serena never goes there herself, the acclaimed poet and professor takes the journey for her, living vicariously through Serena&#8217;s sass and brass. &#8220;Serena&#8217;s grace comes because she won&#8217;t be forced into stillness; she won&#8217;t accept those racist projections onto her body without speaking back.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rankine&#8217;s affection for Serena&#8217;s defiance is so deeply personal, she almost channels <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Carlos\" target=\"_blank\">John Carlos<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tommie_Smith\" target=\"_blank\">Tommie Smith<\/a>, raising their black-gloved fists into a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mexico_City\" target=\"_blank\">Mexico City<\/a> summer night some five decades ago.<\/p>\n<p><em>Step off, backward white folk.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Between black excellence and her picture next to the Twitter hashtag #BlackGirlMagic, Serena is clearly playing for more than herself and history at the US Open this week.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, a term not found with a Google search: &#8220;Cablanasian excellence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is possibly because <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tiger_Woods\" target=\"_blank\">Tiger Woods<\/a> has not won a major since the Bush administration, and he has been careful not to singularly co-opt any one part of his multiracial identity (African-American, Thai, Caucasian, American Indian, Chinese and beyond).<\/p>\n<p>But now that we&#8217;re routinely taking stock of two seminal athletes of color, both of whom dominated their <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Downton_Abbey\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Downton Abbey<\/em><\/a>-white sports at different times in their careers, it&#8217;s fair to delve into how they both handled race and ask a simple question:<\/p>\n<p>Is the importance of a strong racial identity &#8212; especially being viewed as authentically black &#8212; something to fall back on during career and life struggles?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/tennis\/story\/_\/id\/13551475\/tiger-woods-serena-williams-racial-identity\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Serena Williams, Tiger Woods and racial identity in sports ESPN 2015-09-05 Mike Wise, Senior Writer Mike Wise writes that Serena Williams has embraced her blackness and found a spiritual home while Tiger Woods has been proudly biracial and found a perhaps unintended kind of isolation You can&#8217;t miss the term &#8220;black excellence&#8221; pulsating through Claudia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,20],"tags":[9251,21031,21029,21030,7222,21018,105],"class_list":["post-42670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-espn","tag-golf","tag-mike-wise","tag-serena-williams","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tiger-woods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42687,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42670\/revisions\/42687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}