To say Serena has “matured” by returning to the site of a harrowing racial episode implies she was immature in declining to attend in the first place

The reality of tennis as a sport predominately owned, played and watched by white people has rarely been as conspicuous as an episode 14 years ago featuring one of its greatest ever players at one of its most prestigious venues. And with Serena Williams’s return to Indian Wells this week – after boycotting the tournament due to a harrowing affair that saw a stadium full of mostly white fans jeer her and her family throughout a championship match – the tennis community is tasked again with confronting how it has dealt with that moment, and with the world No 1’s unexpected return to where it all took place.

A refresher: Indian Wells, 2001. Venus Williams pulls out of a hotly anticipated semifinal against 19-year-old sister Serena with a tendonitis injury, a withdrawal that isn’t announced by the tournament until just 10 minutes before the match is scheduled to take place before a packed house and a prime-time audience on ESPN. (Venus has long contended she informed the tournament much earlier in the day, while Indian Wells co-founder and then-chairman Charlie Pasarell said at the time that he was unaware and “wish she had at least gone out and given it a try”.) Fans emphatically boo the news, and soon after allegations resurface that Richard Williams orchestrates which of his daughters will win in the matches they play against each other.

Two days later, when Serena meets Kim Clijsters in the final, the crowd unleashes its frustration on Serena and her family by booing the teenager as she walks on to the court, cheering her every unforced error – a crowd etiquette no-no outside of team competitions such as Davis Cup, Federation Cup or World Team Tennis – and emphatically backing the foreign opponent over the home finalist. In response, Richard raises a clenched fist, evoking John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s iconic 1968 Olympics Black Power salute. (In the years since, both Venus and Richard have alleged they received racial abuse throughout the match, although there have been no corroborating accounts from any of the 15,940 fans in attendance.)

After losing the first set, Serena overcame both the talented Clijsters and the belligerent crowd to win Indian Wells for a second time. Since that incident, without ever making a public announcement of boycott, neither Serena or Venus have played at Indian Wells. It has been a silent pledge that both sisters have kept for almost a decade and a half, despite receiving constant questions each year on whether they would one day forgive what happened and return.

Although not all members of the far-flung yet tightly knit global tennis media are white, practically all those who have criticized the Williamses’ lack of forgiveness for Indian Wells throughout the years – and even questioned the veracity of the alleged racial abuse they received – were. Some felt the sisters were being unfair to fans by boycotting the event. Others thought they were “playing the race card”.

But while Venus has reaffirmed her choice not to play at the massive event, widely regarded as no lesser than the sixth biggest tournament in the sport, Serena shocked the tennis community last month with her decision to end her boycott, after winning her 19th Grand Slam singles title in Melbourne.

In an op-ed on Time magazine’s website, she wrote how the events had weighed on her mind for years, citing Nelson Mandela’s words and actions of forgiveness as motivation for her decision to return. She even went as far as to host a competition for her fans in which one lucky person would be able to meet, practice with and watch her play at the tournament.

Arguably more noteworthy than her return is the fact that Serena is using the contest as a way to highlight mass incarceration: every donation made will go to the Equal Justice Initiative, a criminal justice group in Montgomery, Alabama.

A breathtakingly inappropriate response

Many around the game did understand Venus and Serena’s decision not to play. As one of the tour’s four premier mandatory events, players face threat of suspension for not participating unless injured or on bereavement – yet former Women’s Tennis Association CEO Larry Scott said in 2008 that he wouldn’t penalize the Willamses for skipping the event because he refused to put them in a situation “that is going to be awkward”. Even Pasarell got it, saying that the incident was “unfortunate” while being hopeful that both sisters would “someday come back”.

Given that institutional empathy, one would think there would be a tacit understanding from the tennis media that Serena not only did the right thing by returning to Indian Wells this week, but that she also – along with Venus – did the right thing by boycotting the tournament in the first place. Instead, questions and criticisms about whether the racial abuse even occurred, like from LA Times columnist Bill Dwyre, or the sentiment that the Willliamses were holding an unnecessary and mean “grudge” over the tournament, like from Inside Tennis Magazine’s Bill Simons, were breathtakingly inappropriate.

Unsurprisingly, a lack of diversity in tennis media circles engendered those perspectives. And these points of view have unfortunately been variations on a theme throughout the years from prominent tennis writers, especially American ones.

Those sentiments by the tennis press corps, which is almost exclusively white, completely misread the importance of the boycott. It’s as if they all said “finally” the moment they saw Serena’s op-ed, expressing a collective sense of relief that they don’t have to face the issue anymore. They feel now they are exempt again from ever having to report on or address the very real racial issues within tennis due to Serena’s decision to turn the other cheek. The prevailing narrative from this confined media circle of a more mature, wiser Serena overcoming a long irrational stance – like from ESPN’s Peter Bodo or Sports Illustrated’s Courtney Nguyen – is severely lacking in nuance, thus implicating these writers as indirect contributors to the climate of non-diversity that has engendered their myopic takes on the Williamses.

Serena did not “mature” because she made the choice to play Indian Wells again; that would imply she and her family were immature by initially declining to attend. Despite any tantrums that Serena has had over the course of her career, she has shown many examples of class, candor and largesse that have been largely under-reported or acknowledged at all by the media. She has never been accused of gamesmanship by any player, and has long condemned it when on the receiving end.

The “older-wiser” narrative also exempts Indian Wells’s past managers from accountability for their role in a regrettable episode – not least Pasarell, whom the Williams family claims did not offer any real apology on behalf of the tournament. Pasarell did make numerous overtures to try to convince them to return, but the tournament has never formally apologized publicly or privately to the family. If Pasarell, who was also a close friend of legendary black tennis figure Arthur Ashe, wouldn’t call the Williams family liars for their disturbing accounts, then surely he must think an apology – if only for the sake of being magnanimous – would be the only requirement needed to be made from the tournament for them to return?

Pasarell and tournament co-founder Raymond Moore have not been in charge since 2009, when Oracle software billionaire Larry Ellison saved the event from financial struggles by purchasing it and the entire venue. Ellison’s people also reached out to the Williams sisters about their possible return, but no formal apologies to the family were made by the new regime either.

Without an apology from either of Indian Wells’s two proprietorships, Serena could have easily continued her boycott through the end of her career, just like her sister still seems willing to do. Having won the tournament twice and going on to cement her legend as arguably the greatest women’s tennis player since her last appearance there, Serena does not need Indian Wells as badly as Indian Wells needs her. And though the tournament has flourished under Ellison’s infinite ostentations, the feeling persists for some that Indian Wells has been visibly hurt without two of tennis’ biggest stars for so many years, especially in an era when American men’s tennis has fallen completely by the wayside.

By mining a positive angle from her return, Serena has become a rare modern-day superstar athlete willing to highlight the immorality of mass incarcerations, wrongful convictions and unstable policing still prevalent in America. It’s not a coincidence that those most afflicted by the injustice are black, and that Serena chose the Equal Justice Initiative as the organization to benefit from her competition. It is a turnaround sprung from deep contemplation about a moment that she could have let remain toxic for her. She could have easily decided to continue doing as her older sister Venus is rightly doing by still not attending. Both have made their choices, and anyone who doesn’t respect them requires a larger, more sophisticated perspective.

It would be great for the tennis press to learn from Serena’s actions and take their own negative situation – the lack of diverse perspectives on not only this issue but on many other manifestations of racial inequities in the sport as well – and ask deep questions of themselves on how to solve it. Because the consensus response to Serena’s return to Indian Wells – that Serena is “matured” while Venus continues to be “stubborn” – demonstrates that they are failing miserably.