Serena Williams -- Bias or Bad Shot?

I have often felt that I would be woefully inadequate in parenting a black child in America. I would not know how to handle the reality of the world that child was going to face. This week’s “Newsweek” had an interesting article called, “See Baby Discriminate”.
The article quoted a study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that evaluated how well black kids did when their own parents warned them of discrimination. They found that “some preparation for bias was beneficial, and…necessary.”
The study went on to warn that constantly (“often”) hearing warnings of future bias (“rather than just occasionally”) made black kids “significantly less likely to connect their success to effort, and much more likely to blame … failures on …teachers—whom they saw as biased against them.”
How often I have experienced (as a white teacher) this in black pupils!. I’ll never forget the first time. I moved the seat of a particularly loud and disruptive young man to another area of the room. He glared at me: “You just doin’ this ‘cause I’m black!”
I had the wit to reply, “No, I’m moving you because you are the loudest and most disruptive person in this room.” He had the grace to see my point, shut up and got down to business. A couple of years ago a young lady marched down to the school office to protest my racism.
I was giving a lesson on some phase of the Civil Rights Movement (in which I participated) and used the term “blacks”—which we were directed to do by our black cohorts who no longer wanted to be called by WEB Du Bois' preferred term, “Negroes”.
This girl’s hand shot up. “WE,” she announced, “prefer to be called “African Americans. It is racist to call us ‘blacks’.” I realized she had absolutely no knowledge of the history of slavery, Africa, Africans or blacks in America, so I looked at her and asked,
“What’s an ‘African-American?’” After her attempt at an answer, I pointed out that I had several African American neighbors. Some were of sub-Saharan black derivation. One was pure blooded French—born in Africa, now a naturalized American citizen. I further pointed out that the wife of the 2004 Democratic candidate for president was an African American—pure blooded Portuguese.
One of my best friends married a woman born in Morocco, pure blooded French. I’ve met pure-blooded Englishmen, Dutchmen, Egyptians and Moors who fit the term. How, I asked her, does the term “African-American” designate that the person in question is or is not black?
Confronted with something she did not understand—coming from a white person—she immediately assumed racial slur and marched down to the office. The principal (black) and I were pretty good friends and he had once sat for nearly an hour listening to my lecture on the history of slavery in Africa and the United States. He knew me.
He took her to his computer and gave her a short course on black Africans in America and the various names they have been called. Then he shipped her back to class. He was laughing when he saw me later, “I knew that was you.”
The study in “Newsweek” warns “that frequent predictions of future discrimination ironically become as destructive as experiences of actual discrimination.” (p59/9-14) You cannot help but wonder if Serena Williams recent blow-up at the U.S. Open came out of the same feelings that sent the young girl to the office—as angry as Serena was.
Was Serena assuming a racial bias that may not have existed? After all, she was having a bad tennis day overall, not just on that one call. No matter how skilled, every rider eventually gets bucked off a horse. Babe Ruth struck out a lot. At that second, Serena couldn’t see it.
How could I—or anyone—as a parent find that middle road that teaches a kid he or she may face real discrimination while NOT conditioning him or her to believe that no failure is really their fault? The very notion daunts me. I wouldn’t even try to ask Serena.