Naomi Osaka Black Excellence

Image Credit Instagram @seebasschin @ccgsocial Used under fair use.

Naomi Osaka kicked off the second Grand Slam of the year with a dinner party with some of her closest friends, including Coco Gauff, Taylor Townsend, Gael Monfils, Chris Eubanks, and Asia Muhammad. The dinner party was a celebration for Black excellence as she put it: “Growing up, there weren’t a lot of tennis players I could look up to that looked like me. Being a minority in a sport like tennis is very isolating, but the positive is that you keep tabs on everyone that, being blunt, is Black. There’s a fellowship, a camaraderie that doesn’t need words to describe.”

Naomi would have to defend the publicly released images of the party, photo credit to @seebasschin and @ccgsocial, as critics online felt it was unnecessary. Osaka would respond by saying, “Our presence is a present, and I am so grateful for the gift of my peers.”

Ricky Boone is a published author, law student, and accredited journalist for the WTA.