Madison Keys won her first Grand Slam title after beating world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open this past weekend in three exciting sets, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5.
The victory ended a frustrating time for Keys where she advanced but failed to win a Grand Slam.
In 2016, she lost to Serena Williams in the Australian Open semifinals and in 2017, she lost to Sloane Stephens in the US Open Final. So finally securing the elusive Grand Slam victory was a major moment for the soon-to-be 30-year-old player.
Her victory came on the first weekend of Tr**p’s return to the White House, a weekend where he unleashed retribution, hate and chaos across the country and the world.
While immigration took center stage at the start of his punishing administration, his other target was diversity.
In only a few short days, he has attacked and/or eliminated DEI initiatives at almost every level in the country. While many companies, like Target and Meta, collapsed under the weight of his executive order, others like Costco, JPMorgan Chase, Apple and Ulta have stood firm in their support of DEI programs.
DEI, as everyone with common sense and humanity knows, is not about harming one group for another. It’s about opening the door to different trains of thought and to those commonly overlooked because of their skin color, gender, age, sexual preference or other characteristics traditionally discriminated against.
But it’s been twisted to refer to Blackness and used as a term to scare white people into thinking it’s a revolutionary movement aiming to eliminate them from positions of power.
That ignorance, the same employed by anti-woke and anti-CRT whiners, has engulfed many and led to rollbacks in civil rights protections.
Now, emboldened by the former president’s return, Blackness is under direct and unabashed attack on a national level.
That’s why Madison’s victory and Blackness matter.
