Continuing the Challenge: Serena Williams and Intersectionality

Advancing Racial JusticeEmpowering Women

Mar 13

As we make the transition from Black History Month into Women’s History Month, Serena Williams offers a real-time, real-life example of the intersectionality between race and gender. Williams is widely considered to be the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, and she and her sister Venus revolutionized the sport beginning in the 1990s. Throughout Williams’ remarkable career, she has endured endless media attention focused on her clothing choices, her appearance, her behavior both on and off the court, as well as her athleticism.

Williams retired in 2022, but was recently in the news after a brief appearance in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. In the halftime show, Williams performed a dance that recalled a spontaneous, and controversial, celebration she performed after winning the 2012 Olympics at Wimbledon - a crip-walk, a hip-hop dance move that originated in Williams’ and Lamar’s home town of Compton, CA. We refer you to our “Continuing the Challenge: Intersectionality,” and we invite you to take a deeper dive into the conversation surrounding Williams and her career, and her crip-walk, in the context of gender and Blackness in America.

Williams at the Super Bowl:

5 minutes:

Serena Williams’s C-Walk Is So Much Bigger Than a Drake Diss

5 minutes:

Serena Williams’ Sparks Controversy For Her Super Bowl Crip-Walk

Context for the criticisms leveled at Williams throughout her career, including her crip-walk at Wimbledon

3 minute listen:

NPR

There's Growing Fallout Over Code Violations Against Serena Williams : NPR

7 minutes:

From Essence magazine

Real Talk: Serena’s C-Walk: Is It Really That Deep? - Essence