When God Tells You Who You Are

Maya Angelou said,

“When people tell you who they are, believe them.”

I believed my tennis group on court one when they told me the other day that they are ignorant, unfaithful and blind. Every week we meet between the lines and net. Court one is where the best, top-shelf gamers, the better than the court two players play. I don’t get assigned on their court much because I am not like them. Thank God I am not.

Someone said (I know who, but it doesn’t matter who because no one spoke up to refute what was said, thus they all said it), “Serena looks like a silverback. I prefer Sharapova.” With purpose and malice, they said the greatest tennis player ever was an ape and her Russian rival was more the apple of their eye. They said it within my earshot to bait me. When I heard it, I paused for a moment as I was preparing to serve on my court—the lesser-player court. I stepped back and looked over to the top-shelf gamer court, paused again, then stepped up to the line to serve. “The score is 30 all,” my opponents on my court said, thinking my pause was out of confusion of the score. It wasn’t, far from it. I knew exactly what the score was. What was unheard by others was perceptible to me. Those words were meant to push my button. Yet, I refused to respond. I served on, won the game and the set. I believe I won much more.

With ace-words, arsenic intentions, court one was outside the lines of intelligence. They judged Serena Williams by her looks. She is not fitting of their normative gaze of Roman noses, thin lips, and narrow hips of some bygone renaissance era of Mona Lisa and Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist's Garden in Argenteuil. What does Serena’s robust thighs, broad nose and lioness head have to do with the power of her serve, the steely-ness of her nerves, and the courage of her journey from Compton to Wimbledon? When it’s match point against you, what does thickness have to do with toughness. To the unknowing, uninformed, and insecure, everything. It validated who court one said they were: ignorant. The ignorant man look looks on the outside. The eternal man looks at the heart. Kid David was chosen as King David, not for his ruddiness of skin, but for his readiness of heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

With unforced errors, unmerited malice, court one was outside the bounds of faithfulness, if not to God, certainly to country. By preferring Sharapova over Serena, they were siding with the Soviets: Stalin, Lenin, and the Cuban missiles of October. Their comments had nothing to do with forehand form, rather the function of selective civics, choosing the Soviet’s red hammer and sickle over the red, white and blue of the ideologies and idolatries of our rocket’s red glare. The Williams sisters and father have done more to advance the American-dream ideal of “up-by your-boot straps” by adding their own styles of braids and laser two-hand backhands—straight out of Compton, straight up Mount Olympic with gold medal in their sites. With court one’s adoration of the “Russian barbie with the loud grunt”, they were waving another of their strange and self-styled confederate banners, not of patriotism, but all things Putin and KGB. She infiltrated the American dream tennis machine—the Bollettieri Academy—sucked the milk of a million-dollar tennis teat only to carry the flag of mother Russia in London, 2012. By siding with Sharapova over Serena, the good old boys of court one showed their true colors and sang their off-key anthem: “Oh say can you see, the Barbie Russki”. And they criticize Kaepernick for taking a knee. Court one took a dump on Old Glory.

Finally, with their double-fault of ignorance and treason, the court one boys tripped in their own blindness. John McEnroe at Wimbledon once screamed at a tennis official, “You can’t be serious,” when a ball clearly in was called out. He had a meltdown. The “Serena is a silver back. I prefer Sharapova” remark, conversely, was clearly out—out of the bounds of decency, honesty, and truth—but everyone on the courts that day (except me) seriously called those comments in by their silence. It deserved a meltdown, a reaction by someone. But, the God-fearing, cross-wearing, flag-waving, hand over the heart national anthem singing, good old boys, red--blooded Americans raised not a peep. Why should they? By silence, they were saying, “I agree she is an ape, sub-human, sub-American.” They saw nothing wrong, and, by omission, see me and others who look like her and me as the same.

By their silence, they were saying, “We can say the “ape word” (equivalent to the N-word) right in front of you because we don’t see you. Now, that’s color-blindness of a different horse. You can’t see me, and you can’t see your true self. I would rather be seen hanging from a tree as ‘strange fruit’, than be invisible.

Bravo, McEnroe for your melt down. It worked for you. It lit your fire. Although you lost the point, you went on to win the match and the Wimbledon Championship. In an otherworldly way, I won the other day, as well, because there was no melt down, no “there go another angry negro”. I refused the bait. Court one would go home with the deep ravine awaiting them: Their children’s teeth will forever be set on edge by the sour grapes of their fathers’ blindness, that America will never be fully the America they want—constituted on paper, and realized on the streets of Minneapolis—one nation under God, indivisible, where all men are, not just created equal, but treated equal, with liberty and justice for all.

It is true, according to Maya Angelo: Believe it when people tell you who they are especially when they are ignorant, unfaithful and blind. Better yet, believe it when God tells you who you are:

“You are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), made in His image (Gen. 1:26).

Game. Set. Match.