I say, anyone for tennis?

When I was a newbie at my favorite university in the United States, I found plenty of Americana to be absolutely fascinating, one of which was American football.  Within a matter of days, it seemed like, I was familiar with the rules of the game and was a passionate follower of the college and professional varieties--without ever having even touched a football!  Ah, those were some wonder years of my youth that have faded so rapidly!

The quarterback of the team was Rodney Peete, who had one of the best smiles ever.  A talented multi-sport guy, Peete chose football for good.  He duked it out with the crosstown rival, Troy Aikman and led USC to the Rose Bowl game.  Which is why I didn't understand a fellow graduate student's comment that Peete would not make it to the NFL.  The NFL and the fans, he explained, were racist to think that a black guy wouldn't have the abilities to quarterback.

That understanding of racism in American sports was also a part of the Americana that I have been following since.  This is a very strange country, to say the least!

But then that following January, Doug Williams became the first African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl and he and his team thrashed John Elway and his team with 42 unanswered points.  A black quarterback won the NFL!

Peete went on to the NFL, and had a moderately successful career, although nothing like Aikman's glorious years with Dallas.  Fast forward the years that I have been in the US.  I no longer care for sports.  There is no emotion invested anymore; I scan the news only to know who won and lost.

When I read that Serena Williams had won, again, my first thought was, "isn't she too old to play competitive tennis?"  And the next question was, "'how come she is not celebrated big time?"  Maybe the second question was because that has been analyzed quite a bit.

A year ago, after her victory at the US Open, the New Yorker noted:

Forget tennis for a moment, though: when I say the greatest athlete in a generation, I mean the greatest in any sport. Sorry, LeBron. Sorry, Tiger. Sorry, Derek. For fifteen years, over two generations of tennis, Williams has been a spectacular and constant yet oddly uncherished national treasure. She is wealthy and famous, but it seems that she should be more famous, the most famous. Anyone who likes sports should love Williams’s dazzling combination of talent, persistence, style, unpredictability, poise, and outsized, heart-on-her-sleeve flaws.
But not everyone loves her.

Why?  As Vox put it right in the headline, "Every Serena Williams win comes with a side of disgusting racism and sexism."  At least Peete didn't have to deal with sexism!

In the moments surrounding her win, Williams was compared to an animal, likened to a man, and deemed frightening and horrifyingly unattractive. One Twitter user who wrote that Williams "looks like a gorilla, and sounds like a gorilla when she grunts while hitting the ball. In conclusion, she is a gorilla." And another described her as "so unbelievably dominant...and manly".

 It is a bizarre world in which we live :(

"The racism raining down on Serena's victory parade highlights the nature of white supremacy ... her career has been one marred by the politics of hate, the politics of racism and sexism," Leonard wrote.
The racism that underlies the characterizations of her as hypersexual, aggressive, and animalistic, also means that when she dares to express frustration, she's stamped with the infamous "angry black woman" stereotype.
It's as bogus as the rest of the labels she's endured, but given the slights against her over the years, she has every right to be outraged.

A tweet stated it succinctly:

Actually you see a lot of demands that successful Black people be humble. That's left over from Jim Crow era etiquette.

Of course, things have changed.  The NFL now features plenty of non-White quarterbacks.  But, there is a long, long way to go before we can be free of racism and sexism in sports.

I, for one, am mighty impressed that Serena Williams continues to win even at the ripe old tennis age of nearly 34!  Awesome!

I am a work in progress

"The director of safety research at _____ also spoke at the session" the daughter said.

I was curious.  The daughter is in a field that has nothing to do with the corporation whose safety research director spoke at the event.

Which is when I became yet another evidence for how curiosity killed the cat!

"Really?  What is his connection to your field?" I asked with my usual curiosity.

Without missing a beat, almost like a reflex, the daughter responded.  "You mean her connection."

Boy did I feel awful.
Well, I continue to feel awful.

It was one hell of a reminder that deep down in my subconscious there are some sexist frameworks that continue to shape my understanding and view of the world.  I know that when I used "his" it was no slip--I was channeling an image of a male as the safety research director.  It was the default image.

"By the way" the daughter continued, "it was an Asian female."

She put me in my place there.

At least I didn't try any of the stereotypical male ways of dismissing all that with awful humor, or by defending my privileged male status.  I have learnt that much.

Another lesson in life.

It is not easy to get rid of the horribly screwed up frameworks that our families, societies, offer us when we are kids.
The privilege that boys and men have over girls and women.
The privilege as a Brahmin.
Gender, caste, race, religion, ... the list is seemingly endless.
It is almost as if we then spend the rest of our lives as adults trying to get rid of all the brainwashing from the earlier years.

"When I travelled the world after high school, that was when I realized how racist my people were" said an acquaintance recently over a lunch meeting.  A white guy he is.  That reminded me of a former colleague, also a white male, from my California days who often remarked that his grandparents had quite some difficulty transitioning to the idea that became the law--that blacks are not inferior to whites and that we are all equals.

To be educated does not simply mean to get that piece of paper and then to work and buy a car or a home.  Instead, whether through formal schooling or otherwise, education helps us make and remake ourselves into better humans.

Every day of our life is nothing but yet another opportunity to be educated on who we are.  Sometimes, the lessons are delivered by our daughters.  I hope I don't give the daughter more opportunities to school me ;)