In a Facebook post, Serena Williams vowed to not be silent in the wake of countless black men being killed at the hands of police violence.
The tennis star shared that while driving in the car with her nephew, who was behind the wheel, she began to worry about his safety after seeing a police car on the side of the road. In that moment, she said, she realized how easily someone she loves could end up like so many others.
“Today I asked my 18 year old nephew (to be clear he’s black) to drive me to my meetings so I can work on my phone… In the distance I saw cop on the side of the road. I quickly checked to see if he was obliging by the speed limit. Than I remembered that horrible video of the woman in the car when a cop shot her boyfriend,” Williams wrote to her more than 4 million followers.
“All of this went through my mind in a matter of seconds. I even regretted not driving myself. I would never forgive myself if something happened to my nephew. He’s so innocent. So were all ‘the others.’
“Why did I have to think about this in 2016? Have we not gone through enough, opened so many doors, impacted billions of lives? But I realized we must stride on — for it’s not how far we have come but how much further still we have to go,” she added.
“I [then] wondered … have I spoken up? I had to take a look at me. What about my nephews? What if I have a son and what about my daughters?”
Williams also quoted Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous saying, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
Williams ended the post saying, “I won’t be silent.”