Serena v. Korea ?!?

I, for one, am particularly tired of race as a subject of American conversations. I'd like to think liberally that we are "past that," and I cringe every time someone plays the card in a game that is theretofore and should be color free...if you know what I mean.

(E.g., this month's GQ, p. 176, sec. 4 of 4 on "How to Feel Good," entitled, "The Good News Pages." As a rough year plods along, we had to ask: What's the good news? Tossed oddly among an odd assortment of interviewees is our old friend Alfred Sharpton, who informs us that "this spring, James Young, an African-American, was elected mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town known to all of the world only because two Jewish men and a black man were killed there in 1964 for registering African-Americans to vote. In that same place, in the Deep South, where we once saw a crucifixion of people based on color, we're now seeing a resurrection of people based on getting past color." Now in defense of Sharpton - who I don't normally defend - the election of Young is a good thing, yes, a very good thing indeed. As is "getting past color." But can't we all recognize that the most ironic and problematic and frustrating part of Sharpton playing his usual role is that he keeps talking and talking and talking and talking about color in a manner that disallows us to ever get past it?)

And so it is with serious reserve and fear for my postracial hopes that I bring up here what no one seems to be talking about elsewhere: That the "outburst" of Serena Williams on Saturday night in Flushing certainly has an obvious racial subtext.

And, no, no, no: that is not what I'm thinking. Not a cheap, Sharptonesque subtext wherein Ms. Williams feels somehow disenfranchised because she is black, that somehow her blackness is being worked against by all members of the U.S. Tennis Association or the cultural superstructure at large. That's too conscious, too last-generation, too 1950s America.

No, what I'm talking about is that Gladwellian subconscious racism, the kind that you can't fear until you first detect it through one of those deeply unsettling Implicit Association Tests. And once you find out about it you work really hard to control it, but you can't help but wonder about those who don't really know...you know...maybe what you think you know.

Here I'm thinking about Serena, and the lineswoman, and the chair umpire, and the tournament official. Their fears, prejudices, and perspectives.

(Internal Aside: Part of me wants to end this post here because it feels like I've been treading water for the last four paragraphs. I'm not overly comfortable floating into the deeper end of the pool where conjecture and suspicion swim. But before I take the easy way out through the shallow end, permit me to make the point that stands contrary to the assertion in my first sentence:)

Thus, it's hard to watch the aforementioned outburst without thinking of the LA riots, of Menace II Society, of Do the Right Thing, of a particular M.E. Dyson lecture, the title of which escapes me.

We're all too aware of the Korean-American and African-American fued/conflict/distrust/history/call-it-what-you'd-like-here to not at least fear a maybe.

And while the specific Asian ethnicity (and name, which often dictates you-guessed-it) of the lineswoman remains unreported (why exactly?), I'm quite sure I'm not the first to think about what she or Serena or the others may have thought - consciously or subconsciously.