Naomi Osaka and Taylor Townsend co-hosted a dinner where the guest list was simple: Black tennis players only. The internet, predictably, did what it does best—acted confused about something that isn’t confusing at all. The photos were warm. The vibe looked chill. The kind of room where you don’t have to translate yourself mid-laugh. But instead of letting it be what it was—community—people started demanding an explanation.
Why is it only for Black players? Why can’t it be for everyone? Isn’t that…exclusive?
If you’ve ever belonged to a group that was never the default, you already know what’s happening here. The question isn’t really about fairness. It’s about discomfort. Because when Black people gather without performing for anyone else, it interrupts a long-running assumption: that whiteness is the center of the room, even when it isn’t invited.
Tennis is “global.” The culture is still narrow.
Tennis loves to brand itself as international, elite, progressive—an “everyone” sport. But step into the lived reality of the tour (or any country club-adjacent pipeline), and you feel the reality of its exclusivity by design. The unspoken dress codes. The “professionalism” comments that land differently depending on who’s being judged. The way a Black player’s confidence is called “attitude,” while others are called “passionate.”
Affinity groups exist because the world is not neutral. They’re a response to being outnumbered, overlooked, and over-scrutinized. A place to compare notes without code-switching. A place to be celebrated without being turned into an example of unintentional “inclusivity.”
A friend of mine who runs a local cycling group called Bikes, Brekkie, and Black Girls has heard the same tired question: “Why is it only for Black women?” The subtext is always the same—your togetherness makes me feel left out, therefore it must be wrong. But what people are really bumping up against is this: community among marginalized folks exposes the absence of community in mainstream spaces. If you’re used to belonging everywhere, the existence of one room where you’re not centered can feel like rejection.
It’s not. It’s boundary-setting. It’s care.
I spoke with professional soccer player Brianna Pinto to get her perspective on this. Brianna’s foundation hosts soccer and field hockey clinics for young Black and Brown girls in collaboration with Beyond Our Game, and faced some initial backlash for that decision. Black women make up 12% of NWSL players. In her clinics, Brianna has been transparent about the fact that it’s very likely you’ll be the only Black girl on most of the teams you play for.
I didn’t have a Black [soccer] teammate until I was 12 or 13, which was really challenging during my formative years. I also played tennis growing up, which is not accessible, and very cost-prohibitive. Sport is a place to compete, a place for expression, and a space for community. We have to create spaces for people to exist in their full humanity. An event like that is paying respect to the Black athletes who came before them, who allowed them to become household names. It also serves as a space for them to share non-sport things, and how they can support each other, and allows them to exist without judgment. They are leaders in the sport of tennis, and they should be leading the charge to make spaces like this.
The NWSL has seen considerable growth in the presence of Black women athletes, and we want to continue seeing that growth. The Black Women Player Collective was created during COVID for NWSL players. The BWPC has been a great organization in soccer, which gives young women a chance to have their voices heard when they normally may not have had that chance.
Why does it bother you?
If the first instinct is to interrogate a Black-only gathering, it’s worth flipping the script: What is it about Black people enjoying each other that unsettles you? What fear gets activated when you’re not invited? And why do you believe every space should default to your access?
Many Black athletes (and Black people, period) are tired of explaining the obvious. Not because the answers are complicated, but because the questions are rarely in good faith. They function less like curiosity and more like a soft demand: justify your needs in a way that makes me comfortable.
So what should happen next?
Honestly? Another dinner. And another. And another.
Invite Hailey Baptiste when she’s healed and ready. Add Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, Victoria Mboko—whoever wants to be in the room. Let it be recurring. Let it be normal. Let it be as unremarkable as every other gathering in tennis culture that has always been selective, always been network-driven, always been centered around the same few types of people—just rarely named as such.
Because that’s what’s so funny about the outrage: tennis has never been “for everyone” in practice. It has always been curated—by class, by geography, by access, by tradition. The only difference now is that Black players are curating something for themselves, with joy, on purpose, out loud.
And if that makes the internet uneasy, that’s not a problem to solve.
That’s the proof it’s working.
💌 Thank you for reading!
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