This paper will examine whether American tennis fans favor white European players over minority American players like Venus and Serena Williams. It will analyze their treatment by the media and fans from when they rose to prominence as phenoms to the end of their careers. The discussion will focus on whether their treatment has been influenced by racial and/or class perceptions, and how any resistance to them manifested. It will compare commentary about Venus and Serena to that of non-American Grand Slam winners.

1. Yellow, Green and Black:
The Treatment of Venus and Serena Williams in Professional Tennis
This paper will attempt to explore the question of whether American Tennis fans favor white
European players over minority American players. Specifically, the paper will examine the
treatment of Venus and Serena Williams from the moment that they exploded onto the
international tennis scene as “phenoms” to their current treatment as they reach the end of their
exemplary careers. The discussions will center on their treatment by the media and tennis fans in
an attempt to tease out whether ascriptive characteristics of them are tinged by racial and/or class
perceptions. Part of the conversation will focus on the tennis establishment and the persona of
exclusivity that surrounds the sport. The paper will ask the questions: where the sisters
welcomed into the tennis academy? If there was resistance was it a product of class, race, or
both? How did this resistance manifest itself? These questions will be answered by comparing
media and fan commentaries of Venus and Serena Williams against those made about winners of
Grand Slam tournaments who are not American. This study will expand upon the findings of
Thierry Devos and Marzarin Banjo contained in their article, American=white?, Vol. 88, No. 3
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44-446 (2005) where the authors tested the implicit
and explicit responses of a control group that tended to show that even in the arena of sports to
be American is synonymous with being white. This paper adds to the larger discussion of the
historical perceptions and treatment of black women in America.