Serena Williams Ohanian Reveals Why She Opted For a White Guy

When Serena Williams got married to her husband, Alexis Ohanian, the internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Reddit, in 2017, the black community criticized the tennis champion and her sister, Venus Williams for dating and marrying White men, instead of sticking with Black brothers.

Serena Williams’ marriage to a White guy might come as a surprise to anyone who has read her father Richard Williams’ 2014 memoir, “Black and White: The Way I See It”.

The book captured how much resentment he felt about the racism he faced growing up in the American South and how intent he was on preparing his tennis-playing daughters to handle being outsiders in a predominantly white sport.

Racist comments that he said he heard at the tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., in 2001 were a big part of the reason Serena and Venus boycotted the event for more than a decade.

The mother-of-one explains her reason for marrying her dream man, Alexis Ohanian in an interview with The New York Times.

Christopher Clarey, The New York Times sports columnist, asked Serena, who had dated black men and white men, what message her marriage to Ohanian sent and she replied:

”Oh my God. Literally all I tell Alexis is, ‘well, you know, there’s such a difference between white people and black people.’ He always gets to hear about the injustices that happen; that wouldn’t happen if I were white. It’s interesting.

I never thought I would have married a white guy, either, so it just goes to show you that love truly has no color, and it just really goes to show me the importance of what love is. And my dad absolutely loves Alexis.

Ultimately I wanted to be with someone who treated me nice, someone who was able to laugh with me and someone who understood my life and someone that loved me.”

”And you know, I’m sure there’s other people out there,” she paused for effect and then laughed. “But you know, Alexis is the one I connected with, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Serena’s private life will soon be made public with the premiere on Wednesday of a five-part series on HBO called “Being Serena”.

Williams said she was the one who initiated the process with the HBO series.

“It was super-organic,” she said. “When I found out I was pregnant, I was saying, ‘I really want to get some footage of me,’ because I remember my dad had all this film when we were younger, all this cool footage, and I wanted to start this journey for Olympia, even though she was the size of a raspberry at the time.”

The series tracks her pregnancy, her life-threatening postnatal problems and her comeback. The cameras follow her and Ohanian through some of the most intimate moments of their lives: even into the delivery room during Olympia’s birth by cesarean section as Ohanian murmurs, “So proud of you,” into his wife’s ear.

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