Venus and Serena Williams’ Father: “Sports Will Always Be Prejudice”

On the heels of the release of his new book, “Black and White: The Way I See It,” Richard Williams, father of tennis greats Venus and Serena Willimas said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that sports will always be prejudice. 

“Sports is gonna always be prejudice, and it’s a subject that we don’t always talk about, afraid to linger on, but I think it’s a world we could talk about it and have open discussion like your program here. We could stop that problem,” Williams said. 

Williams said he prepared Venus and Serena years ago to deal with prejudice by asking kids to call them names on the bus.

“They have been trained for that – Venus and Serena. A few years ago when they was juniors, I had some kids to come up on the bus, and I had them to call them all kind of names and play music so it could prepare them,” he said, adding that he didn’t want his girls to think that “this world was good and sports is gonna be this way.”

Although huge positive gains have been made over the years, there will always be some form of prejudice in almost every area of American society. But  Richard Williams might be overstating his case. Interestingly enough, of the three major American sports, African-Americans make up a majority in two of the three. Blacks comprise 13% of the U.S. population and are 78% of the NBA, 9% of Major League Baseball, and 67% of the NFL.