Wimbledon and Bias

NAACP seems comfortable with it. Is it seeing a comeback?

Pamela Rosa wrote:

Quote:

snood wrote:
I fancy myself as a fairly intelligent person, but I can't seem to come up with any reasons (that aren't unflattering of the 'bothered' people) for anyone being bothered by that.

Quote:

One of the main effects of illusory superiority in intelligence is the Downing effect. This describes the tendency of people with a below average intelligence quotient (IQ) to overestimate their intelligence, and of people with an above average IQ to underestimate their intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

That's very enlightening, Pamela rosa. But it still doesn't explain the phenomena of rancid pond scum like you being able to use a keyboard. Research that will you love, and get back to us.

NAACP seems comfortable with it.(the word "colored") Is it seeing a comeback?

Mark Williams, the tea party leader who wrote a blog post this week calling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) racist, has been "expelled" from the National Tea Party Federation.

Williams wrote the blog post on Thursday in response to the NAACP's Tuesday declaration accusing the tea party movement of tolerating racist elements in its midst (see The Upshot's rundown on the week of attacks and counterattacks here).

It was written as an imaginary letter to President Abraham Lincoln and accused the NAACP of being racist for using the word "colored" in its name. When some reacted to it in outrage, Williams deleted it from his website, declaring it time to "move forward."

"It's a pity that it happens because a one-on-one sport does need very solid rivalries," Carillo said. "And in women's tennis, in the last couple of years, we've seen what we thought were going to be real (rivalries fade away).

"Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters at this time last year were retired. So I'm thankful that they decided to come back into the game. And I think one of the reasons they did come back is because they saw some real room at the top again."

Luckily for the sport, Serena and Venus Williams have been constants through the past decade, to provide a steady opponent for any outsider or for each other.

One or both of them has been present at the Wimbledon final in 10 of the last 11 championship matches, and Serena, who just beat Vera Zvonareva for her fourth Wimbledon final, had never beaten anyone but her sister in a Wimbledon final until this year.

"We should be thankful that we've had the Williams sisters," McEnroe said. "That was an incredible rivalry. However, it happened in the weirdest situation because it was between two sisters and it was unbelievably awkward for them as well as for people trying to call the match."

Sibling rivalries are the most intense and can lead to blows for guys.

The match I'm watching between Serena and Sharapova is a good example.

Contests between Venus and Serena, though improved in recent years, were for a long time understandable but notorious duds, anticlimaxes to major championships in which fans didn’t know whom to root for. Venus has been the player representative for the tour behind the scenes, but the sisters can sometimes give the impression, publicly, that they really aren’t all that interested in the game. At Wimbledon, they sent reporters back to earlier interviews rather than answer questions they didn’t want to answer, talking about soccer, outfits, meeting the queen, anything but tennis. And after Serena snapped at that foot-fault call, even insiders who sympathized said the incident conjured up a time when John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors made the men’s game seem nasty. If you couldn’t blame her, she still made it hard to take her side.
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Since 2001, the Williams sisters have boycotted the tournament at Indian Wells, in California, one of the tour’s biggest events. Venus withdrew from the semifinals that year, and Serena was roundly booed afterward. Richard Williams, their father, claimed that he heard racist slurs. Despite being cajoled, fined, penalized and begged, they haven’t returned. They’re young, rich, profoundly gifted African-American women who operate as they wish, in a tennis world that’s still overwhelmingly white, conformist and reluctant to acknowledge that race is even an issue. The Indian Wells boycott, a matter of principle or a show of power or both, underscores the tour’s impotence. “The business is ultimately not sustainable on the backs of two players,” Allaster acknowledged at one point, finessing what Bud Collins later put more bluntly. The W.T.A., he said, is dependent on the Williams sisters even as it’s hopeful that new champions will come along to supplant them.

This is a basic truth about the Williamses, held among professional watchers of the sport as well as players. Venus says it herself: “Serena and I did change the game, and it’s interesting to see people on court now trying to do all our moves. To be that person, the one who changed the game, wow, that’s too good to be true.”

Davenport was well liked because of her philanthropy, her willingness to work with children, her accessibility to the fans, etc. and she put up big numbers on the court but she was never a darling. Was that because she wasn't particularly beautiful?

She didn't have a ball or racket in hand, wasn't even near a tennis court, so it took a moment to recognize that one of the most important figures in the history of American sports had changed her game. Because Venus Williams, tennis player, wasn't talking about dogs or fashion; Venus Williams wasn't responding to the latest nonsense about her sister's foot or her father's mouth. No, she was talking about race now, about fighting hatred, about doing right when the easy choice is to do nothing.

She was speaking about February 2009, when the UAE denied Peer a visa to play in its women's tournament, and defending men's champ Andy Roddick earned plaudits for pulling out of the men's draw in protest. Williams, in contrast, decided to play and took heat for that and won, but at the moment of truth -- before Arab royalty and plenty of others who agreed with Peer's absence -- she took the microphone during the trophy presentation and essentially called out the tournament and nation, called it, "a shame that one of our players couldn't be here."

Then in the ensuing press conference Williams called Peer "brave" and cited the inspiration of Wimbledon pioneer Althea Gibson and said that the situation, "made me think of all the people who gave something for me to be here. I am not here to rock the boat or upset anyone -- I'm just here to try to do what's right."

This year, the UAE relented and allowed Peer's presence, and Williams beat her in a match shunted to an outside court for supposed security reasons.

"She was always on my side and always stood up," Peer said after losing to Williams in their third-round match Sunday. "Doesn't matter if it was this year or the year before when I didn't get the visa, she stood up in that final and spoke for me. When we did play over there and we play on an outside court, she was very humble. So I think she's a very -- it's hard for me to say in it in English -- but she's always very support. She always feel for me, also. She understands what I feel."

It was 1997. Venus crashed through the draw and was like nothing ever seen in tennis before: Beads in her hair, incredible wheels and reach, attitude to spare.

"I'm tall. I'm black. Everything's different about me," she said during the first week. "Just face the facts."

She couldn't have been more refreshing, and the media and TV networks and the Williamses all bought into the concept that tennis could, overnight, become post-racial, could deal with black and white issues without anyone getting hurt. But by fortnight's end, the racial cocktail had blown up in everyone's face; little involving the Williams family was said or done that didn't seem suspect. Venus and Romania's Irina Spirlea bumped into each other on a changeover during their semifinal showdown, and Spirlea grinned about it and later postured, "she thinks she's the ----ing Venus Williams!" Venus' dad, Richard, then called Spirlea a "big tall white turkey" and described in an interview racial incidents his family had experienced on tour. Venus watched her post-final press conference in the new Arthur Ashe Stadium -- what should have been a star-is-born celebration -- deteriorate into chaos.

"I don't want to answer that question," she said when asked about Richard's comments that Saturday.

"Are you disagreeing with your father then?" said a reporter. "He told that the bumping was a racist incident ... the whole attitude here: Racism. Are you disagreeing with that?"

"I think with this moment in the first year in Arthur Ashe Stadium, it all represents everyone being together, everyone having a chance to play," Venus said. "So I think this is definitely ruining the mood, these questions about racism ... "

"Your father didn't have to comment yesterday ... "
"You didn't have to bring it up."
"Yes I did, excuse me, who brought it up?"

It was, for everyone, awful to sit through and see. Venus seemed cornered, victimized by both her dad and the sport she loved, and from that moment on rarely engaged in the topic of being black and tall and different.