{"id":17021,"date":"2022-03-21T09:23:27","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T16:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17021"},"modified":"2024-06-13T03:12:03","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T10:12:03","slug":"my-sna-visible-minorities-column-32-on-the-naomi-osaka-heckling-at-indian-wells-tournament-march-21-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17021","title":{"rendered":"My SNA Visible Minorities column 32: “On the Naomi Osaka Heckling” at Indian Wells tournament (March 21, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books, eBooks, and more from Debito Arudou, Ph.D. (click on icon):
\n\"Guidebookcover.jpg\"<\/a>\"Guidebookcover.jpg\"<\/a>\"japaneseonlyebookcovertext\"<\/a>\"Handbook<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\u300c\u30b8\u30e3\u30d1\u30cb\u30fc\u30ba\u30fb\u30aa\u30f3\u30ea\u30fc\u3000\u5c0f\u6a3d\u5165\u6d74\u62d2\u5426\u554f\u984c\u3068\u4eba\u7a2e\u5dee\u5225\u300d\uff08\u660e\u77f3\u66f8\u5e97\uff09\"<\/a>\"sourstrawberriesavatar\"<\/a>\"debitopodcastthumb\"<\/a>\"FodorsJapan2014cover\"<\/a>
\nUPDATES ON TWITTER: arudoudebito
\nDEBITO.ORG PODCASTS on iTunes, subscribe free
\n“LIKE” US on Facebook at http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/debitoorg<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/embeddedrcsmJapan<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.facebook.com\/handbookimmigrants<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/JapaneseOnlyTheBook<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BookInAppropriate<\/a><\/p>\n

Hi Blog. This semester has been an extremely busy one, so I haven’t had much time to blog. All my writing energies are being devoted to creating lectures. Sorry. Anyway, here’s my latest SNA column. Debito Arudou, PhD<\/p>\n

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
\nShingetsu News Agency<\/strong>
\nVisible Minorities: On the Naomi Osaka Heckling<\/strong>
\nMAR 21, 2022 by DEBITO ARUDOU in COLUMN<\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/shingetsunewsagency.com\/2022\/03\/21\/visible-minorities-on-naomi-osaka-heckling\/<\/a><\/p>\n

SNA (Tokyo) \u2014 At a recent tournament in Indian Wells, California, Japan tennis champion Naomi Osaka was heckled by some troll in the audience who shouted out \u201cyou suck<\/a>!\u201d while she was playing on court.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That reduced Osaka to tears. She asked the referee if she could address the crowd, then asked to have the troll ejected. Both requests were denied, and play resumed. Osaka then lost in straight sets.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In post-game comments, Osaka tearfully noted the distraction and compared her situation<\/a> to a 2001 incident where Venus and Serena Williams faced crowd abuse, again at Indian Wells. The Williamses boycotted the venue for more than a decade after that.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fortunately, this time Osaka\u2019s heckler was the outlier. The audience at the venue, fellow players afterwards, media and internet chatter were overwhelmingly supportive of her.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Still, others noted that Osaka needs to develop a thicker skin.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid I agree.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Osaka has been around on this circuit for quite a while. She\u2019s now 24, and obviously has the talent to be world champion. Now the question is, given the choices she’s made<\/a>, does she have the mettle to maintain it? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember, these are the choices she made:\u00a0 <\/span>As I\u2019ve written before in a Japan Times column, \u201cWarning to Naomi Osaka:\u00a0 Playing for Japan can seriously shorten your career<\/a>” (September 19, 2018), she chose to represent Japan, a country with a long history of putting grueling (sometimes fatal) pressure on its athletes.\u00a0 <\/span>They\u2019re expected to put their country first and their personal best a distant second.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s further complicated by the fact that Osaka is a Visible Minority in Japan, moreover living the preponderance of her life in America and remaining unproficient in Japanese. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That means, like for so many Visible Minorities in Japan, her foreignness is tolerated as long as she keeps winning.\u00a0 <\/span>Put simply:\u00a0 <\/span>If she wins, her Japanese half is celebrated.\u00a0 <\/span>If she loses, her Non-Japanese half is to blame. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And she\u2019s not winning.\u00a0 <\/span>She\u2019s skipped tournaments<\/a> due to mental health issues and underperformed<\/a> in the recent ones she\u2019s attended.\u00a0 <\/span>Despite having the honor of lighting the Olympic flame in Tokyo 2021, she only made it to the third round<\/a> in the tennis event.\u00a0 <\/span>Currently she\u2019s dropped to 78th<\/a> in the world rankings.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That is all tragic, especially since her Japanese sponsors will someday start questioning their money\u2019s worth, as she\u2019s the highest paid female athlete in history<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>She\u2019s also used her status (rightly) to visibly advocate for minority causes in America, including BLM (but notably, not for fellow Visible Minorities in Japan; she even ironically dismissed racism in Japan as merely a matter of \u201ca few bad apples<\/a>\u201d). \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the point:\u00a0 <\/span>What is Osaka\u2019s goal?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If she wishes to settle for the celebrity status of \u201cfamous for being famous,\u201d then mission accomplished.\u00a0 <\/span>Tennis or no tennis, she can continue to attend her gala events and model for magazine covers and advocate for her causes.\u00a0 <\/span>Those are her life choices, so power to her.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But if she wishes to remain a tennis champ, especially one representing and compensated by Japan, she\u2019s going to have to develop some focus.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

No matter what, there will be detractors.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s the hazard of being a public figure, especially as a Japanese athlete.\u00a0 <\/span>And her championing off-court issues like human rights attracts even more detractors. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I speak from some experience here.\u00a0 <\/span>While I am by no means an athlete and cannot claim to be a world champion at anything, I too have fought for human rights causes in Japan.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve kept a sustained public campaign against racial discrimination in Japan for decades, writing several books<\/a> and garnering domestic and international media attention against \u201cJapanese Only<\/a>\u201d signs and rules.\u00a0 <\/span>We took our case<\/a> all the way to Japan\u2019s Supreme Court and made it clear to the world, despite all the denialists, that racial discrimination is an embedded, systemic reality in Japan.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That too brings forth detractors who think that pointing out something shameful in Japan is shameful in itself.\u00a0 <\/span>As do the trolls of the Global Far Right, who hold up Japan as their model ethnostate<\/a>, and from them I get death threats on a weekly basis.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But my goal has always been straightforward:\u00a0 <\/span>Get a national law passed against racial discrimination in Japan with criminal penalties.\u00a0 <\/span>It might not happen in my lifetime, but that remains my focus and I pay the trolls no heed.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As should Osaka.\u00a0 <\/span>At some point in time she\u2019s going to have to stop letting hecklers take her power away.\u00a0 <\/span>This is that point in time.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Look, if it\u2019s a matter of unfairness in the rules, or something that targets her because of things she cannot change (such as her racial and ethnic background), by all means, protest that.\u00a0 <\/span>Racism should never be tolerated.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But a matter of a generic \u201cYou suck!\u201d, while unpleasant and undeserved, is something people her age should have learned to deal with by now. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bullies will always exist, and you\u2019ll probably encounter them outside of Indian Wells.\u00a0 <\/span>Showing them that they have the power to affect you like that only emboldens them further.\u00a0 <\/span>Reclaim that power by showing them you\u2019re stronger than they are.\u00a0 <\/span>Be unfazed.\u00a0 <\/span>Otherwise you will appear to lack the mettle to stay champion, and they, not you, will accomplish their goals.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s Indian Wells\u2019 job to create a comfortable and level playing field for athletes, and they should have taken responsibility for that.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s our job as the general public to make sure those conditions are in fact enforced and to support our favorite athletes.\u00a0 <\/span>If Indian Wells isn\u2019t going to cooperate, then yes, boycott the place. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s still the athlete\u2019s job to train both physically and mentally and play their personal best. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So do your best, Naomi Osaka.\u00a0 <\/span>Enforce what you can, tune out what you can\u2019t.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s what champions do.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s the path you chose, and to a certain degree these detractors come with it. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As you might say, dismiss them in your mind as just \u201ca few bad apples.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n

======================
\nDo you like what you read on Debito.org? \u00a0Want to help keep the archive active and support Debito.org’s activities? \u00a0Please consider donating a little something. \u00a0More details here<\/a>. Or if you prefer something less complicated, just click on an advertisement below.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SNA: At a recent tournament in Indian Wells, California, Japan tennis champion Naomi Osaka was heckled by some troll in the audience who shouted out \u201cyou suck!\u201d while she was playing on court. That reduced Osaka to tears. She asked the referee if she could address the crowd, then asked to have the troll ejected. Both requests were denied, and play resumed. Osaka then lost in straight sets.<\/p>\n

In post-game comments, Osaka tearfully noted the distraction and compared her situation to a 2001 incident where Venus and Serena Williams faced crowd abuse, again at Indian Wells. The Williamses boycotted the venue for more than a decade after that. Fortunately, this time Osaka\u2019s heckler was the outlier. The audience at the venue, fellow players afterwards, media and internet chatter were overwhelmingly supportive of her.<\/p>\n

Still, others noted that Osaka needs to develop a thicker skin. I\u2019m afraid I agree. Osaka has been around on this circuit for quite a while. She\u2019s now 24, and obviously has the talent to be world champion. Now the question is, does she have the mettle to maintain it? […] At some point in time Osaka has to stop letting hecklers take her focus away. This is that point in time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,18,12,26,73,56,46,11,48,64,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-discrimination-templates","category-academia","category-immigration-assimilation","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-japans-blame-game","category-nj-legacies","category-practical-advice","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-shoe-on-the-other-foot-dept","category-sitys","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17021"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17466,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021\/revisions\/17466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}