Naomi Osaka let her face mask do the talking at yesterday’s US Open. The Haitian-Japanese tennis player walked onto court wearing a black face covering bearing the name, ‘Breonna Taylor,’ paying tribute to the 26 year-old woman and emergency room technician who was killed in a police raid on her home earlier this year in March. Osaka explained to an interviewer that she will continue to pay tribute to the men and women who have been killed as the tournament progresses, giving fans an extra reason to hope she goes all the way. ‘It’s quite sad that seven masks isn’t enough for the amount of names. Hopefully I’ll get to the finals and you can see all of them,’ she told ESPN.
This is just another example of how she’s using her chosen arena, as a two-time grand slam winner currently ranked at number nine in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association, to start conversations about Black Lives Matter. At the end of August, four days after the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, she decided to forfeit her semi-final match in the Western and Southern Open. ‘Hello, as many of you are aware I was scheduled to play my semifinals match tomorrow. However, before I am an athlete, I am a Black woman. And as a Black woman, I feel as though there are more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis. 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 explained on Twitter.
Her next match, against Italy’s Camila Giorgi, is scheduled for tomorrow. Stay tuned.
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