The Meaning Of Naomi Osaka’s Commitment To Racial Equity - UBITENNIS

The Meaning Of Naomi Osaka’s Commitment To Racial Equity

What does it mean for the highest paid female tennis player in the world to march in the streets to assert her political views?

By AGF
18 Min Read

In early July, Naomi Osaka wrote an op-ed for Esquire, taking a public stance in the political debate surrounding George Floyd’s death. I think this is an interesting choice, and an uncommon one for a top tennis player in recent years, and therefore it deserves some reflection.

First and foremost, I want to clarify my position. I think that a sports website should just write about sports. And I don’t think that readers expect opinions about racism in the USA or Black Lives Matter from a tennis article. In my opinion themes like these require a knowledge that I do not possess. I have my ideas, obviously, as Osaka does, but I don’t want to write about the political side of racism.

I would like to talk about a different topic: what does it mean for Osaka to take a political position in a public way? I remember that at the end of May, before the Esquire article, Naomi posted a video on social media from Minneapolis, where she went to join the protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s death. While this message didn’t resonate as much in the press, it could be argued that it was a stronger one, because it is not common for a public figure to go to a different city to make a statement on such a politically-charged issue.

Maybe I’m wrong, but, for example, I don’t believe that Serena Williams has ever done something like this. Even her boycotting of Indian Wells has always been focused on the individual tournament and on the personal mistreatment she had experienced, rather than on a wide-ranging political issue.

Scrolling through Osaka’s Twitter page, we can easily find a few tweets, from recent weeks, that are concerned with political and social matters.

As mentioned above, it is not common that a top tennis player like Naomi (a former world N.1 and Slam winner) decides to take a public position in the political arena. We are used to great sportsmen who eschew voicing their personal ideas. The reason why they opt for this kind of approach could be personal: they might have little interest in the situation, or a wish to defend their privacy. However, the main reason that comes to mind is money, because the most popular sportsmen draw a large slice of their revenues from sponsorships, which in turn might not be exceedingly happy with their public faces potentially alienating customers.

Some weeks ago, Forbes wrote that Osaka, at 22, is at the helm of a small commercial empire. With 37.4 million dollars in revenues from last year, Naomi is the highest-paid woman athlete ever as well as the 29th highest-paid athlete with no gender distinction.

If we look at her sources of income one-by-one, things become more interesting. Osaka makes 34 millions from sponsorships – the eighth highest figure in sports. In the tennis world, only Federer earns more from endorsements. Djokovic, Nadal, and Serena Williams earned less than Naomi in 2019.

It could be rightly assumed that every agent of a great athlete suggests that their customer keep their opinions to themselves on issues that could upset the fans, and, consequently, the sponsors. Celebrity spokespeople are asked to please the masses as much as they can. When such a person has a truly wide platform, he, or she, has to take “ecumenical” and non-divisive attitudes.

There are obviously opposite cases, sportsmen that are chosen by companies because they are against something or someone. I think, for instance, of Dennis Rodman or, more recently, of Colin Kaepernick. But it is very unlikely that they will become the most paid individuals by sponsors.

Nowadays, it’s not that relevant if some political choices could appear to pander to the mainstream (something that should be proven true): in any case, for those who have to promote a product on the market, it is not only important to connect with the majority, but also not to antagonise the minority.

Probably, the best sport testimonial of the last few decades is Michael Jordan; this infamous quote summarises the marketing zeitgeist: “Republicans buy sneakers too.” We don’t know whether the statement is true or not (Jordan may never have said it, but he has not even disowned it before it became proverbial), but the fact remains that it embodies very well the idea of ​​a spokesperson that must handle with extreme discretion certain topics, because they can become explosive.

Sport’s history teaches us that taking a public stance can be devastating for an athlete’s career. One of the best-known cases is that of Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman, who raised their fists in protests during the 200 meters medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. They paid a steep price for that image which became iconic, all over the world.

Back to tennis, maybe Martina Navratilova was the player that, during her career, stuck her neck out the most on non-sports issues. When she came out as a lesbian, according to the mentality of the time, it was a political act, with a stronger impact than it could appear today, and that was followed by consequences.

In Unmatched, the ESPN documentary dedicated to her rivalry with Chris Evert in 2013, Martina recalled that, when she began to win a lot, the American media framed her matches against Chris as a fight between good and evil. In that clash, Evert played for the good side (the “next-door girlfriend”) and Navratilova the evil (a lesbian from a Communist country):

Of course, when comparing the consequences on Navratilova’s career with those suffered by the sprinters of Mexico City, we realize that Martina had far fewer problems. And this will certainly also apply to Osaka; not only because times have changed, but also because, unlike in other disciplines, a professional tennis player is essentially an autonomous entity, who (if in a winning position) does not have to get in the crosshairs of a governing body in order to practise his or her craft.

However, it’s not all strawberries and cream by any means. A tennis player who enters in a collision course with a national federation may have to give up the Davis or the Fed Cup and most likely also the Olympics. Speaking of the Olympics, Osaka was chosen by the Tokyo 2020 committee as the face of the Games (now postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic); and who knows if the organizers of the event liked her latest public moves.

This is a window into another of Naomi’s facets: she is a Japanese player who is being vocal about American issues. Osaka was born in Japan from a Haitian father and a Japanese mother, but her family moved to the USA when she was three, so she has lived there for about 20 years.

Therefore, Osaka’s choice is perhaps a little more courageous if we consider the fact that Naomi protested in the United States as a “foreigner“. As a matter of fact, due to a peculiarity in Japanese legislation, she had to give up her US passport last year. But evidently in this case her personal history, ripe with transnational cross-contaminations, prevailed, and that is something not to be confined within the on-paper limits of a passport. She said it to herself in a part of Esquire’s article: “A single label has never been enough to describe me, but they tried anyway. Is she Japanese? American? Haitian? Black? Asian? Well, I’m all of these things together at the same time.”

Here is another element that should not be underestimated in Osaka’s decision: her political choice in favour of a plural society, expressed as a Japanese player and citizen. Let’s not forget that if Osaka has earned so much, she mainly owes it to Japanese endorsement deals. And Japanese culture and mentality are not American ones.

Naomi wrote about her relationship with her country of birth: Japan is a very homogenous country, so tackling racism has been challenging for me. I have received racist comments online and even on TV. But that’s the minority. In reality, biracial people—especially biracial athletes—are the future of Japan. We (myself, Rui Hatchimura and others) have been embraced by the majority of the public, fans, sponsors, and media.” 

On this hand it should be remembered that last year controversy sparked for a cartoon made by a Japanese sponsor of Naomi’s, in which she was portrayed as a white-skinned player. Back then, she had expressed herself in a more accommodating way (“They should have told me about it”). It is difficult to say whether she deemed the incident as irrelevant, or whether she still felt uncomfortable expressing her own views in such a decisive way as she did recently. And this evolution leads us to the more personal aspects of her commitment.

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