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Venus, Serena, and the Inconspicuous Consumption of Blackness

2011; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 43; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0021934711410880

1552-4566

Delia D. Douglas,

Critical Race Theory in Education

As the U.S. population becomes more racially diverse and different groups move in to previously White-dominated spaces, new techniques of exclusion and marginalization are being employed in an effort to regulate the opportunities and progress available to racialized minority groups. In this article, the author argues that mass media’s preoccupation with the Williams sisters’ “on-court” play and “off-court” activities constitutes a form of surveillance that is used by Whites to identify, observe, and ultimately, limit the range of available representations of Venus and Serena Williams. The author also suggests that this kind of public scrutiny produces racialized images and narratives constitutive of “race talk,” a key manifestation of the new racism(s) characteristic of the politics of this sociohistorical moment.