Woebeit I was watching Serena Williams routinely eliminate the finest female tennis players in the known, civilized universe, sans Mother Africa, en route to the U.S. Open finals, I simply couldn’t applaud her considerable playing skills, or pulchritude, as loud and proud as I did when her crazy, old daddy Richard was manipulating center stage in the nation’s media as adroitly as she was dominating center court. Square business, I found it bothersome to look at Serena after she thrashed her big sister to secure her number one ranking in the world, insofar as her decision to become a blond impacts an old African warrior a bit more profoundly than a simple fashion statement.

Mayhaps I’m expecting too much from a 20-year-old sister from the ghettoes of Compton, California, but I feel that Serena should be history conscious enough to want to look as much like the African princess that she is, who is also queen of the once lily-white tennis world, as humanly possible. Instead, she seems to rather be a “typical boot,” just as Willie Lynch predicted we would, “For hundreds, or even thousands of years,” after we had been thoroughly “niggerized” during 400-years of slavery.

Hey, stop playing that Twilight Zone theme, you know damn well where I’m coming from. Unless you’re one of those, “we are not a monolithic people,” made in America Africans who have forgotten their history. I’m certainly aware that we have amazingly short memory spans, when it comes to remembering our roots. Thus, we tend to forget just how far we have come in spite of impossible conditions, but perhaps can you recall what the commentator asked Serena, after she beat Venus at the Wimbledon earlier this year, to feel me.  Remember the decidedly blond commentator asking (the newly bleached blond Serena), “I guess you proved that blonds do have more fun?” Awww come on and pray with me my brothers and sisters.

Don’t sit up there and act like you didn’t detect a bit of derision in the commentator’s voice. In fact she played off the question with a little snicker, while a clueless Serena appeared to say “duuuuh?”  Well, in case you didn’t catch the inference, the commentator was saying in her own snide way, “You might be the greatest tennis player in the world, but if your heart’s desire is to look like us (White gals), you ain’t nothing but a typical boot.” Oh, you say I’m reading too much into a simple hairstyle? A hairstyle that most sisters seem to be enamored with, just as they have always worn hair pieces, wigs or whatever else that will allow their hair to blow in the wind like the beautiful, blonde movie stars and super models cruising in a convertible? Okay. I’ll buy that. Perhaps I have wandered into the Outer Limits of logic again, but I’m sure you remember that “Typical Boot” Eyeview.

Fact is, I got e-mail for calling the Williams sisters being “My Gals.” It was about three years ago, when Richard was still in full control of his teenage daughter’s futures. If you strain your memory, you’ll recall me predicting trouble in the Williams household after I spotted a “blond” Orasene sitting up in the stands. Are you still praying with me brothers and sisters? I repeated that prophecy when I later wrote that Tiger Woods, who dyed his hair blond and later struck a goofy pose on the cover of Sports Illustrated, was a typical boot. Come on now, let’s not forget our history, because that’s why we keep on making the same mistakes over and over again. I know you remember, because some of you called me a racist back then too. Nevertheless, as soon as Venus got old enough to make her own decisions she was offered an endorsement contract she couldn’t refuse, that was almost as big a deal as the one that snake offered Eve in the Garden. Yep, she bit. Forbidden fruit aside, it wasn’t long before the Williams family’s paradise went to hell in a hand basket. Orasene, who had a ridiculous bushy blond wig on at the U.S. Open, has put Richard out of her bed and relegated him to the fringes of his daughters’ lives due to her divorce action. Richard deserves better, but he should’ve stayed in his place and not been so arrogant when he talked to White executives.

I keep thinking that Richard worked hard to raise his girls to see themselves as African princesses, sans America’s beauty standards, or approval to define who they were. I’m sure he hammered that into their nappy heads and that was the main reason he wouldn’t let them turn pro until they were old enough to deal with the slings and arrows of the blond beauties that populate the tennis world. Thus I saw Orasene’s blond wig as the first sign of rebellion against Richard, who was widely reported to be the primarily reason his daughters weren’t making big endorsement bucks or were as widely embraced by the tennis world.

I don’t think so. Although Venus and Serena have done for female tennis what Muhammad Ali did for boxing, I read in the Sept. 2, 2002 Sports Illustrated, that the WTA moguls feel that they need to promote blond pulchritude the likes of Simonya Popova, Daniela Hantuchova, Elena Dementieva, Jelena Dokic and/or Ashley Harklerod to replace the fading Russian fox Anna Kournikova. What I’m saying-- straight up-- is, in spite of Richard’s obsession to make his daughters role models (for young, confused, ghetto sisters with low esteem), as soon as Serena gets to the top she sends the message that she would rather be White than right.

What’s next Serena? Will you start dating White guys? Racist statement aside, when I see a decidedly Black Serena rejecting her Afrocentric beauty - I have issues. I also have niggling issues when I see Tiger Woods, the son of an Asian woman and Black man, who publicly admits that he’s turned on by leggy blonds. I have cause to pause and ponder whether they were born or made typical boots? Unfortunately, old Willie Lynch knew what Black folks were going to do while they were yet in their mother’s wombs. I wonder if anybody knows where I’m coming from.