When asked how sexism and racism affected her career, Serena Williams didn't mince words.
Over the course of her two-decade-long career, Serena Williams has won nearly 40 major titles, a record amount of prize money, and has tied with Steffi Graf for the most Grand Slam singles championships of any man or woman, 22. But there's one title that Williams feels has unfairly eluded her.
Photo by Chris Trotman/Getty Images.
"If I were a man, I would have 100 percent been considered the greatest ever a long time ago," the tennis star told rapper Common in an interview for ESPN's "The Undefeated."
Unsurprisingly, for anyone who has ever watched her play, she has a pretty damn good case.
There are, of course, the aforementioned titles. In addition to equaling Graf's singles title record, Williams also equaled her women's record for consecutive weeks at number one earlier this year. But Williams' main claim to greatest-of-all-time status is how long she dominated the sport and how unquestionably she dominated it during that time.
Aside from — maybe, sort of, not really — her sister Venus, no player of her era could make a plausible claim to rivaling her. Sampras had Agassi. Federer had Nadal and Djokovic. Williams had ... nobody. A few of her competitors defeated her, but none came close to equaling her skill when she was in her prime.
Williams had to do it all not just as a woman, but as a black woman.
Photo by Alberto Pizzoli/Getty Images.
"It's very challenging because sometimes when things are blatantly wrong and blatantly unfair and blatantly racist or sexist, I just have to go and put on a brave smile and not let anyone know how I feel on the inside so they don't get that satisfaction even though on the inside I would be dying," Williams said in the interview.
Far from shrinking in the face of those challenges, Williams has used her platform to speak out against injustice and encourage women of color to honor their ambition. In the last year, she's written candidly about her fear of police violence and about using what others perceive as her disadvantages — her race and gender in particular — to fuel her drive.
Women shouldn't have to play down their accomplishments, especially not those who are legitimately, obviously, otherworldly great at what they do.
A 2013 University of Massachusetts study found that women who work alongside successful men tend to play down their accomplishments. An earlier Cornell study found that while the female and male subjects scored evenly on a science test, the women in the study were far less confident in their ability to perform well ahead of the exam.
Williams, to the contrary, has long cast herself as part of the pantheon of historical greats and declared her gender irrelevant. Should she brag so openly? Why not? Male athletes brag constantly — and fans love them for it.
If there's anyone who shouldn't have to keep her high opinion of herself to herself, it's the woman who so thoroughly embodied her era of tennis that she basically changed the way the game is played.
Is Williams the G.O.A.T.?
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Like her peers in other sports — Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Joe Montana, Tiger Woods — there will always be debate about how undeniable Williams' dominance truly was.
But she's more than earned the right to say it.
Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
in 2016, a video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best for her to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their job.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
It evoked shame and sympathy.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is. They combed through more than 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006 and counted the number of comments that violated their comment policy and were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So, what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared nine years ago.