Twenty-two year-old tennis player and powerhouse Naomi Osaka on the women's
final at the US Open in Flushing, NY. Her opponent was Victoria Azarenka.
The three sets were 1-6, 6-3, and 6-3. Osaka also won the Grand Slam title
at the US Open in 2018. During this year's US Open, the tennis player stood
up for racial injustice on the court by wearing black masks with white
writing of the names of some of the Black people killed unjustly by the
. The names included
Breonna Taylor, Elijah Mcclain,
Amaud
Aubery,
Trayvon Martin,
George Floyd, Philando Castile, and Tamir Rice.
Last night, the tennis player wore Kobe's #8 Laker jersey as a tribute to him and said that she does that after each game. She feels like that helped her win.
Two week ago, Naomi Osaka sat out the semifinals as a protest. Osaka, whose mother is Japanese and father is Black said in a social media post that she is an athlete but a
Black woman first. The tennis player said, "I don't expect anything drastic
to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a
majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction." She
continued by saying, "Watching the continued genocide of Black people at the hand of
police is honestly making me sick to my stomach." Osaka also said she was
tired of having found new hashtags every couple of days that contain the
names of people killed by the police.
Naomi Osaka's sit out and on-the-court protests comes also during a time
when many NBA and WNBA teams like the Washington Mystics have decided to sit out games to protest racial
injustices in the U.S.
What do you think about Naomi Osaka's win and protests?
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