Naomi Osaka and Taylor Townsend Hosted a Party. And the Haters Showed Up
Some people just can't tolerate Black joy.
By Shalise Manza Young
On the eve of the French Open, Naomi Osaka and Taylor Townsend co-hosted an intimate dinner party for other Black tennis players who would be at the tournament — by photos, it looked like six people in all.
Osaka noted that some invitees were unable to attend, but think about that number: six. There are 256 men and women in the singles’ draws alone at the Open, and dozens more who play on a doubles team. And a single digit percentage of those players have roots in the African diaspora.
In an Instagram post, Osaka wrote that she keeps tabs on everyone in tennis who is Black.
“There’s a fellowship, a camaraderie that doesn’t need words to describe. You just feel at peace knowing that there’s another person who has experienced similar things to you and you feel less alone.”
Predictably, the very online bad-faith anti-Black bigots and bots were in their feelings, whining about the dinner being racist and how would Osaka and Townsend feel if a group of players held an all-white party. Blah, blah, blah.
And I am left to wonder, again: What the hell do those kinds of people want from Black folk? Like seriously — what do they want?
Since the very moment the people who had been enslaved were granted liberation via the Emancipation Proclamation, a not-small number of people who benefitted from their free labor have dedicated hours of their lives, if not weeks and years, to denigrating them and their ancestors and doing whatever they can to make our lives more difficult.
When the Constitution was amended to grant Black men the right to vote, they used that right with such success — not just participating in elections but getting Black men into local, state, and federal offices — that the Ku Klux Klan formed and began using violence to keep Black men as well as white men sympathetic to their cause away from the polls.
When the courts decided that yes, all taxpayers are due access to the publicly funded pools in town, many cities filled them in with dirt rather than share.
When the courts decided that yes, the children of all taxpayers can attend all of the publicly funded schools, many communities across the South saw a rise in private Christian schools, also known as segregation academies, where they couldn’t be forced to admit Black students.
Those moves and countless others were made to send the message: No Blacks allowed.
When the message was received and Black people did for themselves, they often found great success. In arguably the most famous example — though far from the only one — the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Okla., became known as Black Wall Street, with numerous homes and properties built for doctors and lawyers and restaurants and movie theaters, and it quickly became a neighborhood of affluent, entrepreneurial Black people. In 1921, with local white residents angered at Blacks becoming so prosoperous, an allegation that a Black shoe shine “assaulted” a white woman set off a two-day massacre. Black Wall Street was burned to the ground, and hundreds of its residents were killed or injured.
On and on it has gone. They don’t want Black people in “their” parks or schools or neighborhoods, yet when Black people create their own spaces there is screaming still, because people who look like them are being left out.
So what the hell do they want?
(Let’s be clear: I’m fairly certain I know the answer to this, but because the full-blown “round up of anyone who looks vaguely Black, Central American, or Muslim and send them to the nearest for-profit concentration camp because Justice Brett Kavanaugh said it’s A-OK” executive order hasn’t been issued yet, I need these people to pick a lane.)
I’ve attended dinners similar to the one Osaka and Townsend hosted. Each year at the Super Bowl and pre-draft Combine, there are gatherings for Black media members covering the events to catch up with old friends or make new connections and just … breathe.
To be in community with people who, as Osaka noted, have had experiences similar to your own. To be among the elders, men like Bill Rhoden Jr., who paved the way. To be with people who know what it’s like to have editors and producers hire someone with a fraction of your experience to the job you asked to be considered for. Or, for me, to be around some of the exceedingly small number of women who understand what it’s like to be in a press box of over 200 people and be the only person in the room who looks like you.
The uproar over the dinner party only proved why Osaka and Townsend wanted to hold it in the first place: They wanted to be together, to be free to be themselves without judgment. To be Black and successful and happy.
It’s been easier for them, thanks to Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe and Venus and Serena Williams, but Osaka wrote that her Haitian father had police called on him many times as he was on the tennis court with young Naomi and her sister, teaching them the game; keep in mind, Osaka isn’t even 30 yet.
Too many people loathe Black folk, but what they really hate is Black joy. To see that through it all — over 400 years of enslavement, violence, and systems and structures designed to keep us down even at the expense of lower-class white people — we are still here.
Perhaps Osaka said it best as she addressed the faux-controversy.
“There are multiple things I will apologize for in my life but celebrating being Black and appreciating who we are will never be something I would consider saying sorry for. Thanks,” she wrote.
“Actually I lied, I am sorry. I’m sorry for the people who cannot comprehend in their brains that this is not about exclusion, this is a celebration about how far we have come.”
Shalise Manza Young is an award-winning writer focused on the intersections of race, gender, politics, and sports. She is the director of track and field at Phillips Andover Academy. She and her family, including Contrarian Pet of the Week Coco, live in Boston. You can find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.