citizen? Outside of the obvious written in the constitution that guarantees that all citizens of the U.S. have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, what rights are given to U.S citizens that athletes are denied. Taylor Branch, a civil rights historian who has been focusing on the injustices that have been served to college athletes by the NCAA stated in the movie “Schooled: The Price of College Sports” that, “College athletes do not have the right of representation, they do not have the right of due process, and they do not have the right as a free citizen to seek compensation for services that are valuable”. For over 100 years the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has been the breeding grounds for the mistreatment and violation of rights for those who are considered to be “student athletes”. The NCAA is a non-profit association that regulates athletes of over 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations, and individuals. They are also in charge of the athletic programs of several colleges and universities in both the United States and Canada. They have been making millions of dollars off of the backs of students who sometimes don’t have any money to feed themselves, refusing to pay athletes all for the sake of their definition of amateurism. Taylor Branch made a very good point in his article of “The Atlantic: The Shame of College Sports” when he points out that, “the NCAA was a classic cartel that …show more content…
And in the picture Serena has a tennis ball in her mouth which symbolizes how both and umpire and maybe even the crowd wants her to stay silent and keep her unpleasant words to herself. Not only has she been picked apart for her words but she has also been picked apart and slandered for doing a celebratory dance at the England Club 2012 Olympics. In “Citizen” Rankine stated that, “The American media reported “and there was Serena… Crip-walking all over the most lily- white place in the world … You couldn’t help but shake your head….. What Serena did was akin to cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church…. What she did was immature and classless.” The fact that it was the American media that would slander their own woman’s tennis representative after winning the gold medal at the 2012 Olympics by calling a celebratory dance immature and classless shows the lack of citizenship shown towards Serena Williams and it is probably why she doesn’t feel like she belongs to the U.S. as a woman’s tennis player. Everything that she says and does has been criticized and picked apart by the media to make her seem like she is someone who is unworthy to be considered an American tennis