BY SOUMANOU SALIFOU

An hour ago, when Coco Gauff stood in front of a cheering crowd at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris holding the majestic trophy of the French open tournament, standing tall while the U.S. national anthem played, I saw something bigger than a hardworking athlete who just won a championship. I saw one of our daughters uplifting the entire Black family at a time when our hard-earned rights are being crushed by the stroke of a pen from the Oval Office.

Earlier this year, as a direct consequence of Trump’s ruthless decision to roll back the rights we have fought for and acquired over decades, the pentagon intelligence agency paused special event programs and related events, including for Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and Pride Month.

Trump’s war on the Black family included the abrupt removal, on May 8, of the first Black person and the first woman to serve as Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, and the Department of Justice opening a civil rights investigation into the hiring practice of the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, because he had the “audacity” to discuss the number of Black officials in his administration.

Blacks’ dominance in popular sports is a controversial subject in the United States, a country with a complicated history of racial relations born out of the trauma of slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and the racism that still exists today. For decades, the secret of that dominance has eluded researchers and the media. It’s our view, in this magazine, that this dominance does not make Blacks superior or inferior to other races, just as we don’t gloat over that. Racist, we are not. Racially conscious and proud, we are. And we remember that the last female tennis player who won this same trophy at Roland Garros exactly ten years ago was none other than another member of our Black family, Serena Williams.

Hurray, Coco! We are proud of you. Thanks, daughter, for honoring us like so many athletes in the Black family have done before you. For sure, no pen in the world can erase the historic moment when you were holding that prestigious trophy while our national anthem played, making you an important figure in the important Black family that is sadly under attack from the White House.