Ms. Williams was fresh off her loss to Naomi Osaka at the U.S. Open, where she had heated words with an umpire. She did note, when criticism surfaced of her remarks, that she had only complained in a way that white male players have been doing, with impunity, for decades. In her book “Becoming” and in 2016 interviews with Oprah Winfrey and others, Michelle Obama described how hurt and bewildered she was after being portrayed as an angry Black woman during President Obama’s first presidential campaign. “That’s the first blowback, because you think, Wow, that is so not me,” she told Ms. Winfrey. It’s the woman with the smacking retort, the flip side of categorizing Black men as overwhelmingly physically threatening, except when they are at the mercy of their Sapphires.

Source: New York Times August 15, 2020 00:18 UTC