Game, set and match Knight

Even many of Serena Williams’s fans will laugh at Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight’s depiction of her dummy spit at the US Open final. Contrary to the whines of Harry Potter author JK Rowling, NBA star Ben Simmons, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and others, it was not racist or sexist — just wickedly accurate. Abdel-Magied’s claim it reflected “where much of the mainstream media in Australia is at when it comes to issues of race” was as ludicrous as the Chicago Tribune likening it to the 1899 children’s book character Little Black Sambo.

Williams, one of the great tennis players of the modern era, is a powerful African-American and proudly so. She loves talking about her baby girl, which made the dummy on the floor an inspired touch. And her conqueror on Saturday, Naomi Osaka, does have a blonde ponytail and wears a cap. As Knight said, the cartoon was about Williams having a tantrum on the day, no more, no less. Those claiming it was sexist conveniently overlook Knight’s send-up a few days earlier of Australian tennis brat Nick Kyrgios’s histrionics.

The notion that non-whites, even superstars such as the flamboyant, self-assured Williams, should somehow be exempt from cartoonists’ pens is a bizarre form of racism in itself.

Knight is no racist, and neither was Bill Leak, who died in March last year. Two years ago, Leak was reported to the Australian Human Rights Commission for a cartoon in The Australian underlining the causes of high youth incarceration rates. It showed an Aboriginal man holding a beer can as a policeman told him to teach his son about personal responsibility, to which the man replied “Yeah righto. What’s his name then?” As Leak once said, “A fine sense of humour is one of the defining characteristics of highly evolved, civilised human beings.” Williams is big news. On a better day, she even might find the cartoon funny.