Even those of us who don’t know much about sport know about Serena Williams. Magnificent tennis player, outspoken woman, fierce advocate against racism and the disadvantages suffered by African Americans.
Sports Illustrated’s managing editor Chris Stone paid tribute to William’s sporting prowess and her participation in public life in an editorial yesterday:
Sports Illustrated honors her dominance in 2015, when she won 53 of her 56 matches, three of the four Grand Slam events and built the most yawning ranking points gap between her and her closest competitor in tennis history. We honor her, too, for a career of excellence, her stranglehold on the game’s No. 1 ranking and her 21 Grand Slam titles, a total that has her on the brink of Steffi Graf’s Open Era Slam record, which Williams will likely eclipse by mid-summer.
But we are honoring Serena Williams too for reasons that hang in the grayer, less comfortable ether, where issues such as race and femininity collide with the games. Race was used as a cudgel against Williams at Indian Wells in 2001, and she returned the blow with a 14-year self-exile from the tournament. She returned to Indian Wells in ’15, a conciliator seeking to raise the level of discourse about hard questions, the hardest ones, really. Williams, S.L. Price writes in his cover story in the Dec. 21 issue, “proffered an open hand. Far past the time that anyone expected it, she demonstrated a capacity for change—innovation if you will. She’s groping for answers and realizing she has much to learn.
“She’s determined to make a difference.”
She was a difference-maker in other areas, speaking out against bodyshamers in both words and actions, posing for the Annie Leibovitz–shot Pirelli calendar in only a bikini bottom. The cover shot of this issue? Her inspiration, intended, like the Pirelli shots, to express her own ideal of femininity, strength, power. Her curiosity was ravenous, as she enrolled in an online history of civil rights class at UMass, guest-edited the October issue of Wired and announced her return to Indian Wells in an essay in SI’s sister publication, Time.
All very laudable. But to put it in context, Sports Illustrated has been naming a sportsperson of the year since 1954. In 61 years, two other women were named as sole winners: tennis player Chris Evert in 1976 and runner Mary Decker in 1983. Seven other women have shared the award with men or as teams.
The award is rarely given to African American men and Williams is the first African American woman to win the solo honours.
As with Angela Merkel winning TIME’s Person of the Year award, we can recognise that it is a good thing these awards are finally including women, while at the same time taking note that this is just the first steps towards diversity after decades of ignoring anyone who isn’t a privileged white man.