An article in USA Today this week on Serena Williams’s affection for Mexican culture and food prompted Inside Tennis to engage the tennis star at the US Open on her views on immigration.
Inside Tennis: You’ve spoken many times about human rights situations, from slavery, women’s rights and the work of Bryan Stephenson [on criminal justice]. There’s was a nice piece in USA Today where you mention how you grew up with Mexican kids, Mexican people. Does it ever trouble you that many of them may now be deported if there’s a turn in our politics?
SERENA WILLIAMS: I don’t really know what’s going on with that, so I can’t really speak to that. I know my best friend is Mexican, and I’m really close to that culture, like super close. So obviously it doesn’t sit well with me…
Inside Tennis: Let me put it a different way. What do you think the Mexican, Hispanic culture brings to American culture and life?
SERENA WILLIAMS: That’s what makes America America. It’s a plethora of so many different types of people where you can come and live the dream. You have immigrants coming from all parts of the world, from Eastern Europe, from Africa, from Australia, from Latin America, from South America, from Mexico. Then their second generations become American.
That’s kind of how America got started, from England…from a different country.
