On September 28, 2023, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper stood at the plate in a 3-2 count, waiting for Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Luis Ortiz to throw his next pitch. It was the bottom of the third inning and the score was tied 1-1. Ortiz threw an obvious ball, low and in, and Harper bent down to take off his shin guard, preparing to walk to first base. However, third base umpire Angel Hernández called Harper out, citing that he’d swung his bat. Harper immediately took off his helmet and headed toward Hernández loudly arguing the call, and the umpire ejected him before he even got to where he was. Harper continued to walk toward him, yelling and pointing his helmet at him. Harper got in Hernández’s face as he stood there stone-faced, barely acknowledging Harper’s attempt to argue the call. Phillies manager Rob Thomson had to get between Harper and Hernández; he gently pushed the first baseman away, and proceeded to talk to the umpire himself to get an explanation. Phillies commentator Ruben Amaro Jr. made this observation: “It just seems like every single time he [Hernández] is on the bases or behind the plate, there’s always an issue. It’s almost 100% of the time.” Just before Harper disappeared into the dugout, he tossed his helmet high up into the air and it landed in the crowd. Phillies commentor Tom McCarthy exclaimed: “Somebody’s getting a souvenir!” Then, the replay of Harper’s at-bat was shown and it was clearly obvious that he checked his swing. Harper was issued a $5,000 fine, not for arguing aggressively at the umpire, but for throwing his helmet, because MLB felt that he was endangering fans’ safety. However, they must not have been that concerned about fans’ safety by issuing such a meager fine. Harper is well-known for being an expressive and emotional player. And since he’s been in Philadelphia, the fans have embraced his passionate nature. Fining an elite, high-profile athlete with a $330 million dollar contract five grand for throwing his helmet into the stands is laughable. It’s like fining him a penny. What’s even more laughable are the headlines pertaining to the incident. MLB.com featured an article titled “Kid gets ultimate souvenir after angry Bryce tosses helmet into stands.” Fox Sports and CBS shared the exact same news story with a similar title. The Bleacher Report also covered the story. All of these news outlets focused on one thing: the 10-year-old who got the helmet. And not only did he get Bryce Harper’s helmet, Harper autographed it for him. The incident that began as a terrible umpire call and an unjustified ejection of a star player became a lighthearted story about a lucky kid. To top it off, it was one of the last games of the regular season, and the Phillies had already secured a wild card spot in the playoffs, so the eventual 3-2 loss to the Pirates was, in the grand scheme of things, not a big deal. In addition to that, Harper was able to appeal the fine.

On April 15, 2024, Cuban-born relief pitcher for the Pirates and 2-time World Series Champion Aroldis Chapman was ejected in the bottom of the eighth inning in a game against the New York Mets. It was tied 3-3. After he struck Francisco Alvarez out, Jeff McNeil got to first base on an error, and then DJ Stewart was allowed to go to first base after Chapman was issued a pitching violation. After that, the Mets base runners executed a double steal. Then, Harrison Bader hit a double to left field, which made the score 5-3. After that, Chapman walked up to the home plate umpire to argue and was ejected. A YouTube channel called CloseCallsSports, which focuses on explaining close and controversial calls in baseball “objectively,” featured this particular incident. The narrator made it clear from her explanation that the balls and strikes situation wasn’t unfair, that home plate umpire Edwin Moscoso only really got one call wrong while Chapman was pitching. However, the narrator decided to take a biased approach against Chapman. After Bader’s hit, the narrator commented: “Both runners score on the next pitch and naturally it’s the umpire’s fault.” Right after that, Chapman walked toward the umpire, lifted his glove to his mouth, made a brief comment, and was immediately ejected. It was assumed by the Mets commentators and the narrator that he was ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Here’s what else the narrator had to say:

‘Why’d you throw him out?’ the manager asks, and the umpire might say, ‘Well, the pitcher made a beeline toward me, put the glove in front of his face, so no one can see what he’s doing other than me and the catcher who hear it,’ and then after getting ejected is like ‘What’d I do?’ That’s the benefit of the lip reading guard, plausible deniability, 2016, Chapman’s familiar with that, but they get him separated and we move on.”

However, we won’t be moving on. The narrator’s explanation of the ejection, although technically correct, is slanted toward the umpire for sure. When she claims that Chapman “made a beeline” toward the umpire, that’s an exaggeration. He walked at a normal pace toward the umpire. And when he lifted his glove to his mouth, that was a conscious move, obviously, but it wasn’t inherently threatening or offensive. A more honest assessment of the incident is that Chapman was frustrated; he’d just given up two runs in a close game (which is rough for a reliever), and he chose to confront the umpire, who, more than anything else, didn’t like the fact that Chapman lifted his glove to his mouth in an act of protection. In the few news stories that covered the incident, it wasn’t said what Chapman said to the umpire, but the general assumption was the he was arguing balls and strikes. What the news stories also explain is that Chapman was fined an unspecified amount of money and issued a 2-game suspension. Why? It’s unclear. Chapman was able to appeal and get the suspension down to one game, however, according to Spotrac.com, which lists the fines athletes receive and why, on April 18, 2024, he was fined $112,904 for “Verbal or other Non-Physical Offense Against Official.” That’s an extreme amount of money to be fined for lifting a glove to the mouth and arguing balls and strikes. And in general, it’s an extreme punishment for something that happens quite often in baseball, players arguing balls and strikes with umpires. To be honest, Chapman’s situation was mild compared to Harper’s justified outburst at the third base umpire. And yet both situations were handled completely different for reasons that aren’t quite clear. Why does Chapman deserve such a hefty fine and a multiple game suspension for lifting his glove to his mouth? Why did Harper get such a small fine for throwing his helmet into the stands, and was not fined at all for being verbally aggressive toward the umpire? From an objective standpoint, the assessments of “punishments” seem utterly arbitrary.

A major component of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press, 2014) which won the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, deals with the unfairness American female tennis player Serena Williams experienced in critical moments during her overall impressive athletic career. In the two situations explained above, unfair officiating is common in sports. However, Rankine makes it clear in her book that Williams’s negative experiences on the court are a direct result of racism when she applies Black feminist and writer Zora Neale Hurston’s statement “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background” from her 1928 essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” to Williams situation as a Black female athlete. The most egregious moment happened in 2009 when Williams was forced to lose a semifinal match to her Belgian opponent Kim Clijsters—who went on to win the Singles Final. Here’s what Rankine had to say about the incident:

She [Williams] is in the second set at the critical moment of 5-6 in Clijster’s favor, serving to stay in the match, at match point. The line judge employed by the US Open to watch Serena’s body, its every move, says Serena stepped on the line while serving. What? (The Hawk-Eye cameras don’t cover the feet, only the ball, apparently.) What! Are you serious? She is serious, she has seen a foot fault, no one else is able to locate despite the numerous replays. “No foot fault, you definitely do not see a foot fault there, says [John] McEnroe. “That’s overofficiating for certain,” says another commentator. Even the ESPN tennis commentator, who seems predictable in her readiness to find fault with the Williams sisters, says, “Her foot fault call was way off.” Yes, and even if there had been a foot fault, despite the rule, they are rarely ever called at critical moments in a Grand Slam match because “You don’t make a call,” tennis official Carol Cox says, “that can decide a match unless it’s flagrant.”

Rankine also explains that prior to this incident, in 2004, Mariana Alves, “distinguished tennis chair umpire…made five bad calls against Serena during her quarterfinal matchup” and as a result, was not permitted to officiate any matches on the final day of the US Open. During that experience, Williams was much more composed, a surprise to most, only “wagging her finger and saying ‘no, no, no.’” However, in 2009, Williams response to the foot fault, called by lineswoman Shino Tsurubuchi, was much more appropriate to the moment. Rankine explains

As you look at the affable Kim Clijsters, you try to entertain the thought that this scenario could have played itself out the other way. And as Serena turns to the lineswoman and says ‘I swear to God I’m fucking going to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that? I swear to God!’ As offensive as her outburst is, it is difficult not to applaud her for reacting immediately to being thrown against a sharp white background. It’s difficult not to applaud her for existing in the moment, for fighting crazily against the co-called wrongness of her body’s positioning at the service line.

It’s important to note that Williams was the defending champion, winning the women’s singles final at the 2008 US Open. Up to that point, she’d won three US Open singles finals and it was her ninth major singles title. Rankine is correct to point to racism as a factor that influenced the results of the match, but it is a particular kind of racism, characterized by white privilege. And this is also what makes Citizen still such an important book, ten years after it was published. Rankine’s ability to pinpoint moments of white privilege racism is both brilliant and poignant and necessary because unlike blatant racism (Southern white supremacism or someone simply calling a Black person the n-word, etc.), racism enacted by those with white privilege is much harder to detect because it’s much more subtle and it happens in exclusive environments that most people can’t access unless they’re welcomed in. Rankine, as a poet and professor, had been given access to these environments by those with privilege, and made use of the opportunity to highlight her experiences of being Black in these privileged spaces.

Although tennis is an international sport, it’s safe to say that it’s considered an elite sport—a sport that is only played by those who can afford the lifestyle and social etiquette that go along with being a tennis player or a spectator. Tennis is a perfect example of white privilege operating within the broader world. To zoom in a little more, here are what two Australian commentators had to say at the moment of the foot fault call:

Female Commentator: Can you believe it?

Male Commentator: Foot fault on the second serve gives Kim Clijsters two match points. That is
unbelievable. Is that necessary?

There is a replay attempt.

Male Commentator: That shot’s not gonna show us….Serena Williams is giving it to her [the lineswoman].”

And as Williams talks with two tennis officials who have just run out onto the court, along with lineswoman Tsurubuchi, the mic catches her voice:

I’m sorry, but there’s a lot of people who’ve said way worse….I didn’t say I would kill you, are you serious? Are you serious? I didn’t say that.

The Australian commentators confirm what Rankine has already shown: no one agrees with the call. But now there is another issue to address: Williams’s verbal response and Tsurubuchi’s interpretation of her response. The lineswoman accused Williams of threatening to kill her. Although Williams’s verbal reaction to the foot fault was violent, it wasn’t meant to be taken literally. In all honesty, Tsurubuchi should’ve recognized it as Williams venting because of her egregiously unfair foot fault call. However, instead, she chose to interpret William’s verbal response literally. This is a prominent feature of white privilege in general. Language that is meant to be taken figuratively is suddenly interpreted literally. Those with elite college degrees, sophisticated cultural backgrounds, and high reading levels suddenly struggle to tell the difference between figurative and literal language. And although it’s not clear what Tsurubuchi’s background is, she is a tennis official, and a highly regarded one, because she was given the privilege of being a lineswoman in a semifinal matchup. So, we have to assume she is acting on behalf of white privilege.

Another way of highlighting the elite nature of tennis is by comparing it to other sports, especially team sports, like basketball, football, and baseball—which are primarily American sports, but are incredibly diverse. There are large numbers of Black male athletes in all three sports, and many of them are top players, much like Serena Williams. To put things into perspective, the most obvious comparison would be between Williams and Michael Jordan—unarguably one of the best basketball players to have ever played the game. He won six championships with the Chicago Bulls. What happened to Serena Williams would be like if the Bulls were down in a playoff series, were losing by a small margin, and Michael Jordan was called for a minor infraction he didn’t commit, argued with the ref who made the bad call, and was forced to lose not only the game, but the entire series, which means no real shot at another championship. If something like that happened to Michael Jordan, there would’ve been massive rioting by rightfully disgruntled fans. To go further, Jordan was only “unofficially” ejected from a game once in his career. In February 1992, in a triple overtime game against the Utah Jazz, he was called for fouling Jeff Malone with .5 seconds left. He didn’t like the call, bumped into umpire Tommie Wood, said something to him, and was given another foul. Afterward, he was fined $5,000 and was given a one-game suspension. Even this “punishment” seems a bit extreme, but it’s also important to note that it was a regular season game, not a playoff game. However, because this is tennis, when Williams was forced to give up an important match, the most the audience did was boo the decision. And because this is tennis and not basketball, she was villainized for her verbal response.

It is extremely necessary for readers to understand that Serena Williams’s response is incredibly common in sports. And she is absolutely right when she said that “there’s a lot of people who’ve said way worse.” That statement couldn’t be any more true. However, because tennis inhabits a white privileged space, explicit language comes off as extremely offensive in general. And, because Williams spoke those words as a Black female athlete in a primarily white privileged environment, as Rankine pointed out, her Blackness became even more visible. If Serena Williams was a male athlete playing a male sport in a playoff atmosphere, her response would’ve been seen as her venting because of a bad call, not as a literal death threat. What Rankine also doesn’t mention in her book is that Williams was pressured to apologize for her reaction—even though commentators unanimously thought it was a bad call. Her verbal response needed to be accounted for publicly. In an ESPN article written on September 14, 2009 by Bonnie T. Ford, she made her feelings absolutely clear about the incident. The article begins: “Serena Williams set about repairing self-inflicted damage to her image Monday, first winning the U.S. Open doubles title with her sister and then taking on the more complex task of explaining her actions and feelings in the wake of her shocking on-court outburst in Saturday’s singles semifinal.” Hard to get more biased than that. A few key phrases stick out in particular: “Serena Williams set about repairing self-inflicted damage to her image,” and “her shocking on-court outburst.” Ford makes it sound as if Williams committed a mortal sin. It’s also important for readers to note that not one critical word was said about the bad and inappropriate foot fault call by Tsurubuchi. Another thing to note, Ford mentions that Williams won the US Open Doubles Final with her sister, on top of what happened to her in the Singles Semifinal. In all honesty, the fact that she was able to put what happened to her on the court aside and win the doubles title with her sister speaks to her character and resilience more than anything else, but Ford chose not to highlight that. Ford explained how the incident in general overshadowed her doubles victory with her sister. Ford called it “ugly behavior” and then went on to explain what happened from her perspective:

Williams, who had already received an initial warning for crushing her racket after losing the first set, was serving to stay in the match when she was called for a foot fault on a second serve. She berated the lineswoman, cursing and waving her racket, and was assessed a code violation that prompted a mandatory point penalty on match point, ending the contest. Had Williams been formally defaulted from the match, she would not have been able to play in the doubles final.

Let’s take a minute to unpack this. First and foremost, Ford does not mention that the foot fault call was questionable. Because she skipped that IMPORTANT piece of information and jumped right into, “She berated the lineswoman, cursing and waving her racket” it looks like Williams just flipped out over a call for no reason whatsoever. So, as readers, we have to fill in that vital piece of information Ford conveniently leaves out. What Ford also points out is that Williams was already warned “for crushing her racket after losing the first set.” This act contributed to her losing the match as well. But we need to put this into perspective. There is something in tennis called Racket Abuse. If a player throws a racket, breaks a racket, hits it with their foot, or smashes a racket, they can receive a warning, a points deduction, or a fine that would start at $500. This is another example of how white privilege and elitism operates in tennis. In team sports like baseball and hockey, there are no “punishments” for breaking a baseball bat or a hockey stick. In fact, players do it all the time especially when they’re losing. It is really important for readers to understand that Ford is intentionally trying to paint Williams as being a sore loser with an uncontrollable temper and this is simply not true. There is no such thing as Baseball Bat Abuse or Hockey Stick Abuse. But in tennis, a sport that is viewed as “more sophisticated,” to throw or break a racket is seen as ABUSIVE. To translate: poor manners, bad taste. But it happens all the time in baseball and hockey. Typically baseball players get frustrated and break their bats when they’re angry at themselves with how their at-bat went. Maybe the batter swung at a ball and could’ve walked, but struck out instead, maybe the batter was too aggressive at the plate, maybe the batter let a fast ball go right by him in an ideal location at the plate and he could’ve crushed it for a home run. The usual reason a baseball player breaks a bat is due to personal frustration. It’s not ABUSIVE. In hockey, maybe a defenseman is upset because he couldn’t stop a puck from going into the net, maybe a forward is upset because he hasn’t scored a goal in the last several games, maybe a goalie is upset because he let the opposing team score on them too many times. Hockey sticks get broken on goal posts and they get broken on the benches. It’s not ABUSIVE. But because Williams was frustrated with how the first set went, and broke her racket, it’s considered ABUSIVE. But it was done in the same spirit as any baseball player or hockey player would do it—in an act of frustration.

What Ford also points out is that “Had Williams been formally defaulted from the match, she would not have been able to play in the doubles final.” A default in tennis happens when a player is disqualified by the chair umpire. Since this did not happen, Williams got to compete in the Doubles Final with her sister. What Ford misses entirely is that Williams is participating in two events at once. Although this isn’t uncommon in tennis, it’s still impressive. And the fact that Williams could’ve been denied a chance to win the Doubles Final with her sister because of a bad foot fault call she reacted to seems utterly unfair and ridiculous. And as mentioned earlier, Williams was pressured to give a satisfactory apology. According to Ford, she released a statement “that fell short of a direct apology” and due to pressure from the tennis world, was forced to release “an ‘amended’ statement she said was intended to clarify her feelings.” Here is the statement:

I want to sincerely apologize FIRST to the lineswoman, Kim Clijsters, the UTSA and mostly tennis fans everywhere for my inappropriate outburst….I’m a woman of great pride, faith and integrity, and I admit when I’m wrong. I need to make it clear to all young people that I handled myself inappropriately and it’s not the way to act—win or lose, good call or bad call in any sport, in any manner.

It’s obvious that it was a forced apology because in all truth, what does Williams have to be sorry for? Reacting to a bad call in a situation where those kinds of calls don’t normally get issued? What if baseball players were made to release formal apologies every time they reacted to a bad call by an umpire? It would become utterly asinine and redundant because it would go something like this: Sorry I lost my cool. It happens. But in tennis, due to its white privileged attitude, the choice is made collectively, by those in this world, to demand that Serena Williams—one of the most talented American female tennis players in the history of the game—apologize because she lost her cool like any athlete would in that same situation. And this is how her Blackness becomes hyper visible, because the tennis world is forcing a passionate, outspoken Black female athlete to account for her behavior in a sport dominated by whiteness. And yet, the forced apology wasn’t enough. Tennis took further action. According to Ford, Williams was issued “$10,500 by the U.S. Open, the maximum allowable financial penalty ‘on site.’” Jim Curley, the tournament director, also mentioned that he did consider not allowing Williams to participate in the Doubles Final, but obviously decided against it. Why? Because as stated earlier, that would be utterly unfair. Even more unfair than what the tennis world was doing to her: villainizing her, forcing her to apologize, and fining her a large sum of money. However, that’s not all. In an article published on ESPN.com on November 30, 2009 by Associated Press, “Serena Williams was fined $82,500 for her tirade” and was put on a two-year probationary period. What does this mean? This means that if Williams were to have another “episode” like the one she did in the semifinals, “the fine would increase to $175,000 and she would be barred from the following U.S. Open.” So, if Williams were to lose her cool at any point in those two years, she would’ve had to pay an even bigger fine and would not be allowed to participate in the next US Open. Harsh. And again, AP made it clear that the incident was 100% Williams’ fault: “Williams lashed out at a lineswoman after a foot-fault call….It was a profanity-laced, finger-pointing, racket-brandishing display.” Again, it feels a bit redundant to point out, but there was no mention of the call being questionable. And no real criticism of the white privilege snobbery in a sport that is characterized by rules that are designed to restrict and modify athletes’ behavior in order to make it more comfortable for a mostly white, mostly wealthy fanbase to watch.

However, both articles mention a similar incident that happened in 1995. Here is what Ford had to say about it: “…American player Jeff Tarango cursed out a chair umpire at Wimbledon in midmatch and stormed off the court. He was fined $63,000 and suspended for two Grand Slam tournaments.” Here is what the AP article had to say about it: “…Jeff Tarango stormed off the court at Wimbledon and accused the chair umpire of showing favoritism of certain players in exchange for their friendship. Tarango was fined a total of $43,756, which was reduced to $28,256 on appeal, and barred from Wimbledon the next year.” Interesting. Ford’s explanation gives no context for Tarango’s reaction, but AP gives more information: it had something to do with an official being unfair. And Tarango was able to appeal and get his fine reduced. But, it’s still not the full, accurate story. On YouTube, an original news segment about the incident was released by Wide World of Sports, and the details are filled in: Tarango argued a call with the chair umpire and according to the narrator, he was justified in his questioning of the call. After that, Tarango performed a “wide backhand conceding a break point and drawing applause from the crowd. Tarango’s temper exploded.” He “exploded” by telling the crowd to “shut up.” Then, Tarango was issued a code violation for telling the crowd to “shut up.” And as Tarango went to talk to chair umpire Bruno Rebeuh, he asked this question: “How come they [the crowd] can say whatever they want to me?” It’s also good for readers to know that the footage showed the crowd more than once, and it was 99% WHITE. Tarango called for a supervisor. Then, he confronted Rebeuh by saying “You are the most corrupt official in the game” for which Rebeuh issued a code violation for VERBAL ABUSE. As a result, Tarango walked off the court. Ford claims Tarango “cursed out a chair umpire” which he did not do. All he did was call the chair umpire “corrupt,” was issued a verbal abuse code violation, and walked off the court. But that’s not all. Another IMPORTANT DETAIL both articles leave out is that after Tarango left the court, his wife Benedict Tarango, “lost her French temper,” as the narrator explained, and slapped the chair umpire. It wasn’t until Tarango was interviewed after the incident where he explained the favoritism of the chair umpire the AP article mentioned. As Tarango explained, “I think he was definitely against me because of the things I’d brought up to his friends in the past.” The narrator went on to explain that “an emotional Benedict, who has worked on the ATP Tour” crashed the postmatch press conference. Here is what she had to say:

Benedict: I want to do something against him [Rebeuh] because if we cannot have correction by the authority, I think I can walk out to him and say the truth to him, say exactly what I think. He speaks French as I do, and I think it’s just not fair that this keeps happening and happening all the time.

Reporter: There was a report that you slapped him, is that correct?

Benedict: Yes I did. And I don’t think it’s bad. I think it’s good. Because this guy deserves a lesson at some point. He can do whatever he wants because he’s on the chair. It’s just not fair. It’s just not fair. Players have nobody to defend them in any situation.

Reporter: Just so we get this correct, how many times did you slap him?

Benedict: I just tried to slap him once. Just to tell him that it is enough. Because Jeff cannot do it. If Jeff slaps him, he’s out of the tennis world. So I do it because I think I should do it. Somebody should defend him at some point.

Reporter: What was his reaction?

Benedict: His reaction was [she holds out her arms and shrugs].

Reporter: Can you put that in words?

Benedict: I said one day it’s gonna turn back to you.

Readers have to remember that Benedict Tarango was talking to a room full of reporters. And readers also need to make note of the fact that all the reporters cared about was the fact that she slapped the chair umpire. They completely ignored the major issue she brought up: “He [the chair umpire] can do whatever he wants because he’s on the chair. It’s just not fair. Players have nobody to defend them in any situation.” (Italics mine.) However, it’s no surprise the reporters ignored this truth Benedict spoke up about in 1995 when in 2009, her response to the unfairness Tarango experienced on the court was left out entirely in the ESPN articles. Aside from the poor journalistic work being done in sports in general, what makes it even more egregious is the fact that it’s largely slanted against the players. Jeff Tarango, in 1995, was fighting against the very same thing Serena Williams was up against in 2009: White Privileged Supremacy in Tennis. And it hadn’t changed a bit. Instead, a player like Serena Williams was characterized as a violent and verbally abusive villain. Rankine expresses a similar frustration in Citizen from a poetic standpoint by highlighting the obvious inequality between the chair umpire and the tennis player:

You fumble for the remote control to cancel mute. The player says something and the formerly professional umpire looks down from her high chair as if regarding an unreasonable child, a small animal. The commentator wonders if the player will be able to put this incident aide. No one can get behind the feeling that caused a pause in the match, not even the player trying to put her feelings behind her, dumping ball after ball into the net. Though you can retire with an injury, you can’t walk away because you feel bad.

Although Jeff Tarango could afford to walk away in midmatch, and it was actually a good move for him to walk away, the same could not be said for Serena Williams, who, as an iconic Black female athlete, could not walk away, no matter how unfair or flagrant the calls. And although Tarango and Williams were both fighting against white privilege, Williams, being a Black female athlete, was also fighting against racism, and sexism as well. As a result, tennis, in these moments, becomes a symbol for a world that is primarily white, racist, sexist, and elitist.

Although Rankine’s primary focus is on racism in Citizen, the fact that she highlights the struggles of a female athlete is significant, so in a sense, sexism is there, but it’s less defined. However, it’s important to take a moment to examine sexism in tennis because, since it is an elitist sport embraced by many wealthy, privileged whites, there’s the misconception that it’s more progressive than other sports, because it’s women’s tennis. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. According to the AP article, “She [Williams] earned $325,000 by reaching the U.S. Open singles semifinals, part of her more than $6.5 million in prize money in 2009, a single-season record for women’s tennis. Her career prize money tops $28 million.” Without any extra context, the AP article makes it sound like Serena Williams was raking it in. But again, let’s put this into perspective. On September 4, 2009, Forbes.com put out a list of the top ten highest paid players in tennis. Here are the top five earners in tennis for 2009:

1. Roger Federer. Annual Earnings: $36 million. Career Prize Money: $50 million. Grand Slam Titles: 15.

2. Maria Sharapova. Annual Earnings: $22.5 million. Career Price Money: $12.6 million. Grand Slam Titles: Three.

3. Rafael Nadal. Annual Earnings: $20 million. Career Prize Money: $25.2 million. Grand Slam Titles: Six.

4. Serena Williams. Annual Earnings: $18 million. Career Prize Money: $26 million. Grand Slam Titles: Eleven.

5. Andy Roddick. Annual Earnings: $16 million. Career Prize Money: 16.8 million. Grand Slam Titles: One.

Just from this list alone, it would appear that female tennis players are on par with male tennis players in terms of earnings. The biggest gap that can be seen here is that Roger Federer, in 2009, was the top earner in tennis, with annual earnings of $36 million, career prize money at $50 million, and fifteen grand slam titles. But if we compare that to the top earners in other American sports, it’s actually not a lot of money at all. In 2009, the top earner in football was Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford with $48.4 million, the top earner in baseball was New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez with $33 million, and the top earner in basketball was Los Angeles Lakers forward-guard Kobe Bryant with $23 million. What’s important to understand is that Federer’s career earnings come in at $50 million total. But, the athletes mentioned above were taking in that money on a yearly basis. He made his professional debut in 1998, which means it took him eleven years to earn $50 million in prize money. That’s a huge gap compared to the top earners in the most popular US team sports. It’s also important to understand that tennis players have to win to earn money whereas athletes like Stafford, Rodriguez, and Bryant were guaranteed the earnings they received, whether they won or not. Now, let’s return to Serena Williams’s earnings for 2009: Annual: $18 million. Career Prize Money: $26 million. Grand Slam Titles: Eleven. Willliams made her professional debut in 1995. It took her over fourteen years to earn $26 million in prize money. The Forbes article also explains at the beginning that for all ten players, for 2009, the prize money totaled $38 million, with corporate money coming in at $127 million, which we can assume are endorsements and other financial earnings. This also confirms the wide gap between what tennis players make on the court versus what they make off the court. $36 million as a total for the top ten tennis players in 2009 is peanuts compared to the top earners in football, baseball, and basketball. And yet, tennis is primarily watched by wealthy whites. So in reality, tennis players, who play such an elite sport in front of such a privileged crowd, actually make very little money. And going back to the ESPN AP article, it mentioned that Williams earned $6.5 million in prize money in 2009—“a single-season record for women’s tennis.” So, the top female earner in tennis was being villainized by the tennis world. A woman who was breaking records in earnings.

Another way in which sexism is obvious in this situation is given the harsh punishment that the top female earner in tennis received. All because she said: “I swear to God I’m fucking going to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that?” $82,500 plus two years of probation is extreme, not only because it’s a lot given the fact that she only made $6.5 million in earnings for the year, but because of the comparison to another tennis player who was notorious for his verbal reactions on the tennis court: John McEnroe. To put Williams’s punishment into perspective, according to an article written by Deseret News in 1991, McEnroe’s fines from July 1977 to July 1991 totaled at $69,500. He paid close to 70 grand total in fines his entire career whereas Williams was being forced to pay more than that for one verbal reaction. And it’s also important to note that McEnroe was embraced for being verbally expressive. It’s one of the aspects of his playing that people came to like and appreciate about him. However, the most fined player in tennis isn’t McEnroe or Williams. It’s Nick Kyrgios, who has had to pay over $600,000 in fines. According to an article written in 2015, the then 20-year-old had problems with the chair umpire Ali Nili, whom he directed this question at: “Does it feel strong to be up there?” It should be obvious to readers that the main reason tennis players verbally react to tennis officials is due to the fact that they’re pushing back against the privileged white elite that they represent. Williams isn’t the only one—McEnroe, Tarango, and Kyrgios are examples of male tennis players who have spoken up against elitism in their own ways. And yet, Williams, because she’s Black and because she’s Female, is held to harsher standards than her male colleagues by the tennis world because of the way they choose to villainize her. A final example of this took place at the 2018 US Open when Williams was given a code violation for coaching. When she passionately argued the call, and called chair umpire Carlos Ramos a thief for stealing a point from her, he issued her a code violation for VERBAL ABUSE.

To briefly explain how the coaching violation worked in tennis prior to rule changes after 2022, according to an article written by Ben Miller for The Sporting News on August 20, 2024, “Communications between players and coaches were generally banned,” however, “female players were allowed to request coaching on-court once a set as long as it wasn’t a grand slam tournament.” Since 2022, the rules have relaxed a bit on this issue: “although coaching during matches are still not allowed,” Miller explains, “Coaches can offer brief verbal instructions and provide guidance through gestures but they still can’t have conversations with their players during breaks in play, when there is a brief match delay or when competitors take a bathroom break.” The chair umpire issued a code violation to Williams because her coach made a brief gesture to her from the stands. According to an ESPN segment posted on YouTube about the incident, it was pointed out that the player can be called for a coaching violation even if they don’t see their coach’s signal from the stands. There was some debate in the segment about whether Williams even saw her coach’s signal, but that’s not really the issue here. In most sports, coaching is allowed, particularly in team sports. In fact, there are no shortages of coaches that players can turn to for guidance during a game. But in tennis, it’s not permitted. Why? It’s not quite clear. However, there was an article written by Adam Rubenstein for the Washington Examiner called “Funny How Serena Has Trouble With Referees Only When She’s Losing,” in which he didn’t bother to criticize or investigate the questionable coaching rule, but instead, chose to assert an all-out attack on Williams. In the first part of the article, he references the 2009 incident as a way to frame Williams as a villain and then says: “So it should come as no surprise that Serena Williams has another headline-stealing run-in with an umpire….It’s when she’s losing that she seems to have the most trouble with referees.” That’s true in any sport, not unique to Williams, but Rubenstein also seems to be accusing Williams of wanting to throw another tantrum for attention. One of the reasons Williams was upset by this call had to do with the fact that she felt that the chair umpire was accusing her of being a cheater and saw it as an attack on her character. She wanted an on-court apology. Because Ramos would not apologize, she called him a thief because she felt that he’d stolen a point from her. The verbal abuse code violation brought the officials out to the court where Williams explained, as quoted by Rubenstein: “‘It’s not fair,’ she continues, ‘do you know how many other men say and do things much worse than that. This is not fair….There’s a lot of men out here who have said a lot of things, and because they are men, that doesn’t happen to them…because I’m a woman, you’re going to take this away from me?’”

This incident happened four years after Citizen was published, and this time around, sexism comes through as the issue behind William’s situation. She got a code violation for calling the chair umpire a thief—which he was, to be honest. The questionable coaching rule gives him the power to make a nit-picky call. And this is how white privilege works; there’s always a slight edge given to those in power so that they can maintain control over a situation, like in tennis. Tennis is the perfect example. The chair umpire used the coaching violation to keep Williams in check, even though she was losing in that moment, because it was important to the chair umpire that he be able to assert his authority. To be honest, the signal Williams’s coach gave was so minimal it could barely be seen as helpful, but it was enough to trigger the chair umpire. And yet, this isn’t the direction Rubenstein went in with his thinking. Here’s his response to the incident:

Serena thinks she shouldn’t be held to account for her bad behavior, because some men in the past haven’t been held to the same standard. But does that justify her outburst? If she hadn’t been coached from the sidelines, hadn’t broken her racket, and hadn’t relentlessly shouted at the referee, no code violations would be levied, no points docked.

There’s some merit to the claim of unequal application of code standards. Nadal, Djokovic, among others, have been cited for violations in the past sometimes, but so has Serena. To say that male players get away with the same violations all of the time because they’re male isn’t exactly right. Sure, the rules could be more equally applied. But it does seem awfully foolish to act in a certain way, year after year, as she concedes in her protest, and to be warned each time, and to still think the rules shouldn’t apply to you. But that’s Serena’s game; when you’re down, make a fuss, make it about something larger than yourself: the referees, the system, gender, whatever it may be. Then, you never have to accept defeat — it’s always someone else’s fault.

Rubenstein is talking this way about the most successful Black female athlete in American history. He essentially called her a baby because she was down in an important match, had already broken her racket, and argued with the chair umpire about a ridiculous rule he chose to enforce in that moment—a Grand Slam Final. It’s safe to say that Rubenstein becomes the example himself of white male privilege. His perspective is representative of men’s attitude toward a woman like Williams. Even though he concedes more than once that things could be more “fair,” he still chooses to attack Williams: “…it does seem awfully foolish to act in a certain way, year after year…and to still think the rules shouldn’t apply to you.” To act in a certain way. Williams’s behavior is always the problem, not the questionable foot fault call that cost her the match in 2009, not the asinine racket abuse rule or the severely minor coaching violation that the chair umpire didn’t have to call. It’s her behavior. And why is Rubenstein so bothered by her behavior? Why should it matter to him if she’s losing anyway? Because tennis, much like white privilege, is all about restricting and modifying behavior. And when a Black female athlete like Williams acts out in reaction to those rules, her Blackness exposes the rules’ primary function: to maintain privileged control. And it causes people like Rubenstein to talk down to Williams in order to put her back in her place. To be honest, it’s no surprise racket abuse exists in tennis because it serves a specific function: to keep the player from expressing any kind of frustration because it’s considered poor taste to get upset, especially in public. And it’s no surprise coaching isn’t allowed because coaches of elite athletes like Serena Williams are mainly there to help the player psychologically. To keep the coach away from the player is to deny the player a support system while they’re playing. The coaching rule exists so that tennis officials can be the main authority on the court at all times. Tennis players are on their own in high-pressure situations, and that has major psychological implications—anxiety, frustration, general overwhelm—issues other athletes don’t have to worry about as much because they can have their coaches present for emotional support. If a player can’t break their racket in frustration or get support from their coaches, it’s no surprise they lash out at the tennis referees—who have been given authoritarian power over the matches. In the brief ESPN segment on the incident, Williams’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou was asked why he gave the (itty bitty) signal. Here’s what he said:

Patrick: When I do this motion I do it because I feel that Serena’s in trouble. I feel a lot of emotion because it’s such a big match for her and I want to help. That’s my job—to help her. So, I do a motion that she doesn’t even see, actually. But that’s why I do the motion. It’s coaching, yeah. It’s coaching.

Interviewer: It was the first time, Patrick, that you ever sent a signal to Serena?

Patrick: Yes.

Interviewer: And you chose to do it at that moment. Why?

Patrick: Because I felt it was an important moment. It was probably one of the biggest moments of her career. She’s in a Grand Slam Final, to equal the record of all times. And she’s losing and I feel at that moment she’s lost on the court. So, I tried to help her. That’s my job.

The signal Mouratoglou gave Williams had more to do with helping to re-center her because she was losing an incredibly important match. That’s it. And yes, Rubenstein is right when he says that male players have been given code violations for similar things, but he still chooses to villainize Williams because she spoke up about it. Because she reacted to the call. And it has already been pointed out: it doesn’t matter if the player sees the signal or not. If the chair umpire sees it, that’s all that matters. And since the chair umpire saw it, he chose to punish Williams for it. That would be like punishing a pitcher in the World Series when the bases are loaded and the team is losing and the pitching coach comes out to talk to him, in order to help re-center him. There is no way for a tennis player to get re-centered during a match. And Williams’s is right in a symbolic sense: This isn’t fair.

This is the backdrop for Rankine’s Citizen. It’s an incredibly important book of poetry because Rankine is one of the few poets who has ever written from the position of being a poet in a privileged environment and documenting personal experiences that expose racism in these spaces. Highlighting Serena Williams is a vital part of the book because it gives readers a physical example in society of how white privilege operates. Much of Citizen is made up of a series of experiences the speaker recounts where elitism and racism intersect. What’s also important to understand is that the speaker, who is Black and female, has been allowed access to these privileged environments. For the most part, average people are not allowed to venture into these spaces. A person has to be invited in. Rankine’s positioning is even more important for that reason. The very people that invited her in are also the very people who commit white privileged racism. What makes Citizen even more compelling is due to saturation. Rankine does not give a few examples. She gives a variety of examples, some that are subtle and some that are more explicit—and they stack up so that the deeper a reader gets into the book, the more they start to experience the layers of psychological stress that build up and how it affects the speaker. To further demonstrate this technique, here are some examples of how the speaker experiences white privilege racism, presented all together:

Page 18

The new therapist specializes in trauma counseling. You have only ever spoken on the phone. Her house has a side gate that leads to a back entrance she uses for patients. You walk down a path bordered on both sides with deer grass and rosemary to the gate, which turns out to be locked.

At the front door the bell is a small round disk that you press firmly. When the door finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house! What are you doing in my yard?

It’s as if a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd has gained the power of speech. And though you back up a few steps, you manage to tell her you have an appointment. You have an appointment? She spits back. Then she pauses. Everything pauses. Oh, she says, followed by oh, yes, that’s right. I am sorry.

Page 43

When a woman you work with calls you by the name of another woman you work with, it is too much of a cliché not to laugh out loud with the friend beside you who says, oh no she didn’t. Still, in the end, so what, who cares? She had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right.

Yes, and in your mail the apology note appears referring to “our mistake.” Apparently your own invisibility is the real problem causing her confusion.

Page 45

And when the woman with the multiple degrees says, I didn’t know black women could get cancer, instinctively you take two steps back though all urgency leaves the possibility of any kind of relationship as you realize nowhere is where you will get from here.

Page 50

Standing outside the conference room, unseen by the two men waiting for the others to arrive, you hear one say to the other that being around black people is like watching a foreign film without translation. Because you will spend the next two hours around the round table that makes conversing easier, you consider waiting a few minutes before entering the room.

Page 54

The man at the cash register wants to know if you think your card will work. If this is his routine, he didn’t use it on the friend who went before you. As she picks up her bag, she looks to see what you will say. She says nothing. You want her to say something—both as witness and as a friend. She is not you, her silence says so. Because you are watching all this take place even as you participate in it, you say nothing as well. Come over here with me, your eyes say. Why on earth would she? The man behind the register returns your card and places the sandwich and Pellegrino in a bag, which you take from the counter. What is wrong with you? This question gets stuck in your dreams.

Page 159

Yesterday, I begin, I was waiting in the car for time to pass. A woman pulled in and started to park her car facing mine. Our eyes met and what passed passed as quickly as the look away. She backed up and parked on the other side of the lot. I could have followed her to worry my question but I had to go. I was expected on court, I grabbed my racket.

The situations stack up. But what makes these experiences interesting to read one after the other is that they expose a kind of racism that is less crude but equally as offensive. Typically, racism is seen as being a defining characteristic of the American South, in what is usually regarded as “less progressive” environments. Or racial violence in general is highlighted when it occurs. Although Rankine devotes a good portion of her book to racial violence, it’s the moments listed above that have a profound psychological effect because unlike encountering outright racist attitudes and language in Southern American environments or specific acts of racial violence, the incidents above are harder to confront because they take place in select environments that are seen as “progressive.” There are two main themes of Citizen that can be summed up in two lines: Theme 1: “And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always fitting the description.” Theme 2: “…and this is how you are a citizen: Come on. Let it go. Move on.” The first theme has to do with outright racial violence that stems from the need to punish Black people for being Black through police brutality. The second theme applies to the experiences above. It’s easy for people in privileged environments to be horrified and offended by racial violence and police brutality against Black people because a) it’s viewed as an external problem and b) it can viewed through a snobby lens: only ignorant people are racist. But when these same white people commit racism in privileged environments, their attitude is much like the overall attitude in the tennis world: Keep quiet and move on. Don’t point it out. And as Rankine put it lyrically and bluntly: “Come on. Let it go. Move on.” Get over it.

Toward the end of the book, Rankine includes a passage from an essay James Baldwin wrote called “The Fire Next Time.” Rankine is mainly utilizing the passage as a way to articulate what it feels like to be Black in a society where racial violence is still a problem. She talks about Hurricane Katrina, talks about Trayon Martin, talks about James Craig Anderson, talks about Jena Six, talks about Stop-and-Frisk, talks about Mark Duggan, and talks about the 2006 World Cup when Italian soccer player Marco Materazzi called French soccer player Zinedine Zidane a “Big Algerian shit, dirty terrorist, nigger” and Zidane responded by head-butting him. However, it can also be applied to the experiences above. Here is the passage:

And there is no (Black) who has not felt, briefly or for long periods, with anguish sharp or dull, in varying degrees and to varying effect, simple, naked, and unanswerable hatred; who has not wanted to smash any white face he may encounter, in a day, to violate, out of motives of the cruelest vengeance…to break the bodies of all white people and bring them low, as low as the dust into which he himself has been and is being trampled; no black who has not had to make his own precarious adjustment…yet the adjustment must be made—rather must be attempted.

More importantly, this passage can be applied to the Black female voice Rankine operates from in Citizen. This is also why highlighting Serena Williams is vital to the book because it shows the ways in which Black women are also victims of racism. But to go even further, Rankine’s voice is poetic. The full title of the book is Citizen: An American Lyric. Rankine is pulling from the American lyrical tradition—something that white privileged elitists claim to support and nurture through their philanthropic spirit—to highlight their racism. It’s a brilliant rhetorical move, to make use of lyrical poetry to expose white privilege racism, and it should also be read for that reason—it can be read like a postmodern text. Most famous Black authors, like Baldwin or Hurston, who confront racism in their writing, do it through prose. Rankine, however, chose lyrical poetry as her medium, rather than prose, not just because it’s a groundbreaking move to make aesthetically, but because it’s another way to use what’s regarded as a highly specialized form of literature to call out the privileged audience that is most likely to purchase and read modern American lyrical poetry. It’s a truly brilliant move and worthy of praise for that reason as well.

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen still has a potent affect ten years after its publication. This reviewer would strongly encourage readers to give it another read if they’ve read it before, or pick it up and give it a read if they haven’t. This reviewer read this book as a grad student in the University of Houston creative writing program when it came out. It was a powerful read then; it felt aesthetically and politically important. And it still feels that way now. If it’s not already, it belongs in the American Poetry, African American Literature, and Feminist Literature canons. Citizen is powerful because it focuses in on white privilege racism in ways that no other poetic text has done to such a masterful degree in the entire history of American Poetry. Citizen not only educates those who have never been in these elite spaces, it serves as a guidebook for anyone who will be entering spaces dominated by white privilege. It’s also a companion text to Rankine’s The White Card: A Play—published in 2019—which examines white privilege racism through the play medium. This reviewer also reviewed The White Card and highly encourages readers to read it as well. Both books are sorely needed in a contemporary society that continues to glorify and give preferential treatment to those who have wealth and prestige and operate in privileged environments. It speaks to the overall unfairness and hypocrisy that exists due to this societal imbalance. It also shows that racism is not exclusive to the American South—it operates in more sophisticated, so-called progressive spaces as well. Above all, Citizen is Rankine’s defining text. Her honesty, intuition, and masterful use of lyrical language come together in a very profound and cohesive way. It continues to be an unforgettable book, and an utterly impactful read.

October 21, 2024