Serena portrayed as a cry-baby because she behaved like one Critics blinded to truth
THE world’s gone mad. We’re now told Serena Williams is a saintly victim of oppression and poor Mark Knight a racist. Here’s proof that identity politics strikes people blind, as well as dumb.
Consider. Your eyes tell you Williams is one of the world’s richest athletes, married to one of the world’s richest men, Redit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.
Your eyes also tell you Williams has tennis fans worshipping at her feet, which are clad with the shoes Nike pays her $50 million to endorse.
And while you might post a video of your baby’s first outing in a pram, but your eyes see Williams post one of her daughter’s first outing on a private jet.
Yet identity politics says your eyes lie. You do not in fact see this individual – a powerful and privileged person, so monstrously selfentitled that she staged a massive tantrum at the US Open final when caught cheating.
You must instead imagine a type – Williams the shivering symbol of oppressed and powerless black women.
Take Alana Lentin, an associate professor at Western Sydney University, who yesterday claimed “the idea that black women, even of the stature of Serena Williams, have … enjoyed favour … in the face of whiteness is nothing but a bitter joke.”
So Williams’ private jets? Her Vogue covers? Her fans? The $27 million she earned just last year?
Those must be favours you just dreamt up. Your eyes lied.
They also lied during the US Open final. Apparently you didn’t see Williams’ coach illegally coaching her from the sidelines. You didn’t see her smash her tennis racquet, or abuse umpire Carlos Ramos as a “thief” and a “liar” for docking her a point for her misconduct, just as he’s docked Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal.
Identity politics insists you didn’t see this individual, staging a massive dummy spit when losing to Japan’s Naomi Osaka. You must instead imagine you saw a symbol of oppressed women being picked on by yet another male.
Former tennis champion Billie Jean King, for instance, imagined she’d seen another woman suffering sexism: “When a woman is emotional, she’s ‘hysterical’ and she’s penalised for it. When a man does the same, he’s ‘outspoken’ and there are no repercussions.”
CNN commentator David Love thought he’d seen another black person being picked on: “The penalty against Serena Williams is evidence that black women still face an uphill battle.”
Blindest of all was the United States Tennis Association, which claimed it had actually seen Williams acting with “class” and “sportsmanship”.
Identity politics helped Williams, but it has smashed Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight, who – alas – is neither black nor female.
Knight drew a cartoon of Williams having her tantrum, jumping on her smashed tennis racket, and was astonished to find himself damned around the world by everyone from author JK Rowling to basketballer Ben Simmons.
As CBS frowned, this “white cartoonist’s depiction” had been “deemed sexist and racist” because it “essentially reduced the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion to a big cry baby” while showing Osaka as a “blonde woman” when she “has dark, curly hair in real life”.
Wow. That blindness. Knight drew Osaka with a blond ponytail because Osaka had, in fact, dyed it that way and he drew Williams as a crybaby because she’d behaved like one.
So how was a cartoon criticising Williams’ behaviour seen instead as criticising her race? Once again, because identity politics turned Knight from an individual to an imagined type.
He was no longer Mark Knight, an Australian and one of the gentlest men I know. He was turned instead into a type of white male racist cartoonist from America’s past.
“It was like looking straight into a magazine from the Deep South in the 1950s,” complained Kathomi Gatwiri, a Southern Cross University lecturer.
“Knight’s caricature prompts us to look at how black women’s bodies have been represented in white media from the times of Sara Baartman to Jim Crow,” she added, referencing cartoons Knight has never seen.
Identity politics also blinded ABC Media Watch staffer Jason Whittaker, who claimed the widely-loved Knight was in fact a man “lacking humanity”.
Whittaker’s cruelty is typical of identity warriors. Knight has been vilified as a racist and a “s--t” and bombarded with death threats and his children and have been hounded online.
Again, identity politics strikes its believers blind. They claim they fight meanness, yet are blind to their own savagery, which makes identity politics the perfect refuge of the utter scoundrel. Watch Andrew Bolt on The Bolt Report LIVE 7pm week nights