An interview with a teenage Venus Williams confidently telling a white interviewer she could beat her opponent has resurfaced and gone viral (again).
Actress Gabrielle Union and Kanye West also tweeted the video.
"The goal was to get to doubt herself. To not be so confident. To break her. DO NOT LET THEM BREAK YOU. And do not let them break our children! Confidence rooted in excellence & by birth right. We were born worthy. Never forget that," Union tweeted.
In the clip of the 1995 interview for , journalistJohn McKenzie is schooled by Richard Williams after asking a teenage Venus Williams, why she was so 'confident'.
The clip is included in a 2013 documentary Venus and Serena which traced the lives of the legendary tennis sisters who grew up in Compton and between them won a record number of grand slams.
McKenzie: Did you think you could beat her?
Venus: I know I can beat her.
McKenzie: You know? Very confident.
Venus: I’m very confident.
MacKenzie: You know? Very confident. You say it so easily. Why?
Venus: Because I believe it.
Venus' dad Richard Williams then interrupts the interview to push back on McKenzie's line of questioning.
"What she said - she said it with so much confidence the first time, but you keep going on and on. You’ve got to understand that you’re dealing with the image of a 14-year-old child. And this child gonna be out there playing when your old ass and me gonna be in the grave. When she say something, we done told you what’s happening.
"You’re dealing with a little black kid, and let her be a kid. She done answered it with a lot of confidence, leave that alone.”
The optics of a white man bewildered by the audacity of a young black girl's confidence is such a graphic representation of the gendered and racial projections and limitations imposed on people of colour navigating a world that views their ambitions and dreams with surprise, sarcasm and scepticism.
As the mediocre people who nay-sayed them look on, the Williams' sisters are proof that winning is the best revenge.
