That's Jeffrey Massun.
He's also an artist, and he has on YouTube a thing
called "Art Thoughtz," which I recommend.
You know like, if you're like me and you
live in front of your computer, sometimes you need a break.
And when you take that break, you don't have to get up.
You just go to "Art Thoughtz."
And he has videos, things like "How to be a Successful White
Artist: be white."
"What does a victorious or defeated
black woman's body in a historically white space look
like?
Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora
Neale Hurston's 'I feel most colored when I'm thrown against
a sharp white background.'
This is appropriated line, stenciled on canvas
by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letters, stencils, smudging oil
stains, and graphite to transform
the words into abstraction, seem to be
ad copy for some aspect of life for all of the Black bodies.
Hurston's statement had been played out on the big screen
by Serena and Venus.
They win sometimes, they lose sometimes.
They've been injured, they've been happy,
they've been sad, ignored, moved mightily, seen Indian Wells,
They've been cheered.
And through it all, and evident to all,
were those people who are enraged that they were there
at all, graphite against a sharp white background.
For years, you attribute to Serena Williams
a kind of resilience appropriate only to those
who insist in celluloid.
Neither her father nor mother nor assistant nor Jehovah
nor God, nor Nike camp could shield her ultimately
from people who felt her black body
didn't belong on their court, in their world.
From the start many made it clear
Serena would have done better struggling
to survive in the two dimensionality of a melon
painting, rather than on their tennis court.
Better to put all that strength to work,
in their fantasy of her working the land,
rather than be caught up in the turbulence
of our ancient dramas, like a ship fighting
a storm in a Turner seascape."