When a Black Woman chooses herself: My stand and struggle with Naomi Osaka
When a Black Woman chooses herself, it is a revolutionary act; to do so is to allow ourselves full access to our humanity. It is to center the needs of Self before others and that act for a Black woman is rare and radical. It has made international news when Naomi Osaka dared to choose herself over the shuck and jive of press citing the detriment doing media has on her mental wellbeing. Media, the necessary evil that simultaneously serves and strips humanity from people, women, Black women habitually and systemically. I felt a bitter and twisted anger inside me and a growling protective nature towards Naomi. I was triggered because I knew that space even when the story that she told was her own and remains her own. Still the relationship was too close for comfort and was screaming at me to explore it further and more intimately.
In my essay “Black Surrender Within The Ivory Tower,” I wrote:
I was out sick from anxiety when my former supervisor called and asked me to resign. They claimed it was in our mutual best interests, but I knew it was because I pushed for accommodations for my health and because I was a Black woman, no one thought I deserved them (You Are Your Best Thing)
As a Black Woman we often have to extend ourselves grace because others will not. It becomes our responsibility to treat ourselves with tender loving care, because so often there are no other spaces that provide that for us. Where is the soft place to land for a Black woman? Who holds us in their bosom and nurses us back to health, assuring us it will be alright? Who acknowledges that we, too are fragile and in need of being handled with care? More often than not for Black women, that answer is another Black woman. But our humanity should be universal and not up for debate.
I knew [I was being asked to resign] because I was not “a good soldier,” as my supervisor once asked me to be. I had dared to define myself as something else.
The audacity.
Press is this necessity to Naomi’s profession that is entirely superfluous and in other ways vitally important. Superficially, one doesn’t need to know how to conduct interviews to be a prodigy at a sport. However, our society has commodified nearly everything, so to be recognized in official spaces and places, you have to play the game of press. You have to help create the narrative—what narrative?—Whichever narrative is going to sell and this can often be at the expense of your own personal truth.
My “press conference” equivalent is taking PTO. There isn’t a month that goes by that I did not take a personal day off for some reason, typically related to my anxiety. Naomi was fined $15,000, I had to signed off on a performance evaluation that mentioned my absenteeism as problematic. I feel guilt at having to explain my exhaustion and guilt when I allow myself to push through for too many days. If I didn’t choose me all those many days, I would not last to be able to do the things my job requires of me. And yet I sit, like Naomi and I think…but am I or am I not still capable at being the best in tennis? And isn’t that what matters?
I swirl from a place of questioning to a place of anger. How dare any one ask anything more of Black women after the year 2020? Who was more prolific? Black women and yet who was most vulnerable? Black [trans] women. How and why is it that we have to continue to fight just to be seen as deserving of compassion and care? And there was the struggle. The privilege that Naomi received in having her choice be praised rather than seeing her be told to suck it up because as strong Black women we can do and handle anything the privilege that Naomi has in being able to walk away from the French Open without her livelihood being jeopardized I sat with it. I continue to wonder whether reality actually supports such bold bravery like Naomi for Black women who aren’t Naomi? Is it safe for us to choose ourselves in the same way? How do we determine when it is worth it? Who will stand by us once we do?
I watched as think pieces arose, people praising Naomi’s brave choice and I wondered how many of those same people were extending that sort of grace to the “Naomi Osakas” in their own lives? In our own lives. When I lost my job, I lost not only full time employment and way to support myself independently, I did so while my father was dying from Stage IV lung cancer. I did so while knowing I was wrongfully terminated but after sobbing through a panic attack in my psychiatrists office he asked me if I had the energy to fight “the system” right now? I did not. I chose to, instead, win by fighting for my peace. And I want to say there were very few people in my life who understood what it meant to do so and supported that decision. I was told every way I could have and should have handled things differently to placate the unreasonable demands of my job. Or to, as I saw it, keep the White people from being too unhappy with me.
It is my greatest hope that Naomi will bring awareness to how vital it is to prioritize our mental health even over winning, success, financial gain, fame, and most importantly respectability. I hope that the collective support of Naomi trickles down to everyday practice and acceptance of prioritizing self-care. I will never forget my sisters and my friend Gianni in particular for working to explain to my family exactly what it meant for me to choose my health; in times where I was too depleted to fight or argue, they were my voice. I never had to ask them to stand up for me, they did so because they understood not only me, but what I was standing up for and it wasn’t just myself. It was for our collective humanity to be recognized. Black women, Brown women, women who knew what it meant to struggle with our mental health were and remain my greatest allies, and inspiration.
I realized that I couldn’t keep waiting for someone, anyone to acknowledge us and so I took it as my personal mission to center us in all that I do. It truly was never about what I had to obtain and always about recognizing what I carried innately as a Black woman. All that was passed down to me from my mother and her mother, their mothers before them. My gift to my ancestors would be a great unlearning, a return to the callings of my heart and our collective humanity. Naomi, my sister, I see you. Dangerous is the woman who can give herself what she used to seek from others. You don’t need the press, the press needs you. They may call you difficult, let them. They may call you short tempered or angry, aggressive, uncooperative, they may cost you endorsement deals and speaking opportunities, so be it. They will never take your voice. They can never. You exist in a space far beyond their limited grasp and will continue to vibrate higher. Limitless is the woman who dares to name herself. Because the way I still see it, shame cannot oppress what acceptance has already claimed for sovereignty. And saying “enough” is probably the greatest sign of freedom I know.