Coco Gauff withdrew from the Wuhan Open, the World Tennis Association’s last major tournament of the year, days after she said she was the target of an “insane” number of racist taunts online following a win in the China Open against a Chinese favorite, Sun Xinran. At issue was Gauff halting play in the middle of a point, as the rules allow, when she was distracted by an electronic billboard courtside that she said started flickering.

Gauff didn’t describe the racist abuse she says she got or say it was why she withdrew from a tournament in the same country, but she did tell reporters she’d been exhausted since the controversy over the earlier match. On X, she not only decried the racist abuse but defended her integrity: “hey everyone, you can dislike me or disagree about what happened without being racist. the amount of racist comments/dms I’ve received in the last few hours is insane. Lastly, I’m not a cheater or a thief.”

As the defending Wuhan champion, Gauff’s No. 4 world ranking will dip, which could affect future tournament seeding, prize money and endorsements, which suggests she could not have taken her decision to skip the tournament lightly.

How much is too much racist abuse for young athletes to endure?

The obvious answer is that any amount should be considered too much and that athletes shouldn’t be abused in such a way at all, but some fans, leagues and social media platforms haven’t gotten the memo. The result is that a new generation of Black players is developing its own tactics for responding to racism. Unlike many of the pioneering Black figures in sports who may have felt that self-sacrifice was necessary to make space for more Black athletes behind them, we’ve seen more Black players of this generation decide — or at least consider — walking away as the right move.

Indiana Fever star guard Kelsey Mitchell says she intends to be “selfish” in free agency as she described the mental strain of playing in a home arena where “fans may not like you.” That means she may walk away from her playoff team. She told reporters: “Like, if I showed y’all my DMs about the hate and all of the stuff that comes with being a professional athlete, but specifically being an Indiana Fever basketball player, it’s a lot that goes into that. And those days are hard as hell, man.”

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Mitchell didn’t directly describe the messages as racist, but her white teammate Caitlin Clark, who has been a great white hope for many people who previously ignored the WNBA, suggested that they were when she said, “As far as people that have used me to demonstrate racist rhetoric or hate or discrimination, that’s not something I stand for. It’s never been something I’ve stood for.” She called it “really disappointing when people do that.”

The past decades have brought enormous progress in women’s sports, especially in tennis and basketball, in which superstar players such as Venus and Serena Williams, Candace Parker and Maya Moore smashed barriers that left room for players like Gauff and Mitchell to operate on their own terms.

The Williamses, the first bonafide Black women tennis stars since Althea Gibson came along in the 1950s, were subjected to much racist commentary and racist treatment. In 2001, two days after Venus cited knee pain and withdrew from a semifinal match against Serena at the Indian Wells Open in California, fans relentlessly booed Serena as she defeated Kim Clijsters in the final.

“The false allegations that our matches were fixed hurt, cut and ripped into us deeply,” Serena Williams wrote at the end of the sisters’ 14-year boycott of that tournament. “The under­current of racism was painful, confusing and unfair. In a game I loved with all my heart, at one of my most cherished tournaments, I suddenly felt unwelcome, alone and afraid.”

But with that notable exception, the Williams sisters mostly played through the racism they faced.

Millennials and Gen Z players don’t bear the specific burden of being first, and thus may no longer feel obligated to sacrifice their mental health at the altar of spectators’ bigotry. Exactly how much of one’s dignity was worth the paycheck or the glory of being a champion in sports has always been up for debate.

While some may criticize the new generation of Black athletes for not putting up with what previous generations of Black athletes endured, an alternate view is that those trailblazers left those behind them with more options on how to respond to persistent racism.

So Gauff withdraws from a tournament, and Mitchell suggests she’d rather leave than face abuse from Fever fans. They’re putting their own well-being and dignity first, and no one should begrudge them for it.

The post Coco Gauff is right to put her well-being and dignity first appeared first on MS NOW.

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