The US women's national team made history recently by becoming the first to win three Women's World Cups. With the increased national attention on women's soccer, there's been little focus highlighting the racial disparity of the sport in America and what can be done to combat it.

We spoke to retired goalkeeper for the 1999 championship national team, and two-time gold medalist for the Olympic teams, Briana Scurry, about her path to soccer and getting black girls to see it as an option.

by Raisa Habersham


Mo’Ne Davis was a hot commodity among the sports circuit last year. The 13-year-old baseball phenom was the first little leaguer on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was also named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. Davis’ success is much to be celebrated as the athletic child prodigy sits in good company with the Williams’ sisters, Dominique Dawes, and Gabby Douglass—all of whom started their sports careers in their youth.

by Dvora Meyers for Slate

Last week in Nanning, China, Simone Biles won four world championship gold medals, locking down the team championship, the individual all-around title, and the beam and floor exercise apparatus finals. (She also came very close to a fifth on vault, taking the silver.) Biles has now won more world championship gold medals than any other U.S. gymnast (she has six including last year’s haul, putting her ahead of Shannon Miller) and won more golds than any female gymnast at a single world championships since Ludmilla Tourischeva in 1974. These accomplishments would cap off many a gymnastics career, but with two years to go until the Rio Olympics, the 17-year-old Texan seems to be just getting started.

Simone Biles was not even born when Shannon Miller was winning all of her world and Olympic medals.

But Biles, born in 1997, shortly after Miller collected her gold medals as part of the “Magnificent Seven” at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games and about two years after Miller won the last of her nine world medals, needed no history lesson to understand what it means to be passing her in the record books.

Mo'Ne Davis, pitcher for Philadephia's Taney Dragons, lead her team to a 4-0 victory over a team from Nashville on Friday.

13-year-old Davis is one of two girls at the Little League World Series this year. She allowed only two hits in six-innings in the opener for both teams. Her performance makes her the first female pitcher to throw a shut out in the Little League World Series.

Alice Coachman, the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, died at age 90 in Albany, Ga., on Monday morning.

Coachman, the 1948 Olympic high jump champion, suffered a stroke in April and died at an Albany hospital, according to Albany’s NBC affiliate.

This week five-time US national champion Alysia Montano ran at this year's national championships while only weeks away from giving birth to her first child.

Just two years ago, Serena Williams battled for her life fighting pulmonary embolisms in her lungs. Since then she's made her way back to the top of international women's tennis.

Today, she won the French Open for the 2nd time in her career. She beat Maria Sharapova 6-4, 6-4 at Roland Garros.

Williams won her first French Open title in 2002. At 31, Williams became the oldest woman to win a major title since Martina Navratilova at Wimbledon in 1990 at age 33. Her 11-year gap between Roland Garros titles is the longest for any woman.

This is Williams' 16th major title, and she is now one of only four women to win all four tennis majors twice.

By Staci Gorden

I witnessed her do it again. Serena Williams defeated her opponent 6-0 in the third set, winning the Sony Open Tennis Tournament last weekend. It was another come-from-behind victory, delighting fans and commentators alike. No one should be surprised though. If anything, viewers have now become accustomed to seeing this kind of performance from Serena. But what makes me so proud, is how she has been able to dominate this majority-white sport for over a decade.

Originally posted at Vibin' Courtside

We witnessed it back in 2009 when 18 year-old Caster Semenya dominated the 800 meters at the World Championships and was subsequently subjected to having her gender questioned and tested. Semenya’s masculine physique and “lack of feminity” prompted the IAAF to administer the test. The press got a hold of it and the whispers about Semenya that had been floating around on social outlets became screams.

Only recently have I come to appreciate my quiet, suburban upbringing. My single mother worked tirelessly to provide her kids a safe, secure childhood unlike the one she'd known.

The choice to live in affluent, predominately white communities was mom's attempt to help my sister and I overcome the trappings of life in black, female bodies. But of course she couldn't shield us completely. We never feared for our safety, and we always attended great schools. But being one of only a handful of African American kids submersed in a sea of whiteness had its own pitfalls.  The often overt bigotry I endured left a stain of insecurity and self doubt on my nascent consciousness. That is the reality of my early existence.

When people like Daisy Barringer of XOJane.com speak of an idyllic childhood in which they never had to encounter racism, I simply cannot relate.She writes:

"...it wasn't until I went to college at NYU that I began to learn there were derogatory terms used to insult entire races, religions, and ethnicities."

Must be nice.

Men and women of Color don't get to be blissfully unaware of racial pejoratives. They have their innocence stolen early by hatefulness. It's an awful, unavoidable reality.

A reality I sometimes assume the majority of competent beings of all ethnic backgrounds have acknowledged. Then I see a blog post like "Do We Really Think That Headline Was Intentionally Racist," and I'm quickly reminded that willful ignorance of the lived experiences of People of Color persists.

"The Headline" is the one in which Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks was referred to as a "Chink in the Armor" by Anthony Federico of ESPN.com. Federico was rightfully fired over the incident, but Daisy thinks the outrage toward the writer was unwarranted because she, herself, had never heard the term used as a slur.

How is that possible? You ask. Apparently Daisy lives in a utopic bubble wherein you can completely avoid the inconvenient nastiness of a society built on oppression.

Fact of that matter is, as I’ve gotten older and somewhat wiser, I’ve made a conscious effort not to learn what these words  mean. I can't help but know they exist, but if I don’t ask what they mean or who they're about when I do have the unfortunate chance of hearing them,  I’m not inviting the ugly thoughts and stereotypes into my life. 

Again. Must be nice.

It's ok to not know things, but these sentiments evidence a refusal to listen to and trust those whom racism affects daily. I understand it's difficult for many who've always been explicitly catered to to understand this, but it's not always about you.

White people get to claim naïveté while simultaneously perpetuating the silencing of minority voices. Because how could they ever have known about the complexities of an existence so far removed from their own?

Cluelessness is a cover for flat refusal to self-educate on white privilege. This is, of course, where the Magical Minorities are expected to swoop down, play professor and graciously teach about the damaging racial constructs that have wreaked havoc on POC communities for hundreds of years in this country. I, however, reject that expectation.

Because she managed to publish her blog, I am sure Daisy has access to this incredible thing called the internet which facilitates access to countless resources for those who desire to acquire knowledge. The writer obviously has no such yearning--citing an unwillingness to "invite the ugly thoughts and stereotypes" into her life. Here's the thing, Daisy: POC cannot escape that ugly.

It gets worse.

Daisy not only revels in her admitted ignorance, but she blames POC for raising the issue of Federico's racist words. In the classic game of white privilege called "It's Not Me, It's You," she asserts those who recognized the racist double entendre were the racist ones. (Heard that one before?)

Once I realized that everyone was, in fact, livid about the usage of the word "chink," despite the fact that the phrase "chink in the armor" accurately described Lin's first real sign of weakness, I couldn't help but think that perhaps it was everyone else who was racist, not the writer.

It couldn't have been that when one is constantly beseiged by micro and macro aggressions one becomes adept at spotting them. Nope. We're just oversensitive whiners.

Quite frankly I'm amazed by Barringer's audacity in telling POC what they should be offended by, but let's say, for a moment, Federico really did make an "honest mistake." Then at the very least he's an incompetent who still deserves to lose his job for the oversight. If he can't catch a racist pun in the middle of the onslaught of coverage about the implications of Lin's ethnicity, he's grossly negligent. People have been fired for less.

Most offensive is Barringer's contention that outrage over Federico's insensitivity is "just as horrible as racism." This is how you know Daisy Barringer truly has no grasp of what racism actually is. Racism keeps ethnic minorities underpaid, underfed, undereducated, and underemployed. That icky feeling you get when someone calls you out on your bull doesn't even come close.

Structural oppression persists because of the unwillingness of those with privilege to step outside of themselves.

Please excuse me if I'm unmoved by the incredulity of Daisy and others who struggle to figure out how racism works. I've never been afforded the luxury of being so naive.


Kimberly Foster is the Editor and Publisher of For Harriet. Email her at Kimberly@ForHarriet.com with comments or find her on Twitter.

via The New York Times:

Serena Williams will not play in the United States Open because of a lingering foot injury.

Williams, the top-ranked women’s player in the world and a three-time champion at the Open, called the withdrawal “one of the most devastating moments of my career.”

It will be the first time in the 35-year history of the computerized rankings that the No. 1 player will miss the Open, according to the Women’s Tennis Association.

Williams, 28, sliced her right foot on a piece of broken glass at a restaurant in Munich last month, a few days after winning her fourth Wimbledon singles title. She had surgery in mid-July and has not played since.