Naomi Osaka dominates US Open while honouring black lives
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For each of the seven rounds of the US Open in September, Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka wore a mask bearing the names of black victims of police brutality and racial violence. She came to the final in a facemask bearing the name of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy killed by Cleveland, Ohio police in 2014.
Throughout the tournament, Osaka also honoured Breonna Taylor, shot by police in March while asleep in her flat; Elijah McClain, killed in a police chokehold in August 2019; Ahmaud Arbery, murdered while jogging in February; Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old boy shot in 2012 while walking home from the shops; Philando Castile, shot by police in a 2016 traffic stop; and George Floyd, killed on video by Minneapolis police in May.
When asked what message she intended to convey with the masks after her win, Osaka had a sharp response. “Well, what was the message you got?” she asked. “I feel like the point is to make people start talking.”
This wasn’t the first time Osaka has taken a stand against racial injustice. In August, shortly after the shooting of Jacob Blake, she boycotted a match to protest police brutality before the Women’s Tennis Association agreed to postpone it. She arrived at the venue wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt.
In a social media post about her decision to sit out the match, she explained how she couldn’t sit silently and watch, and how she was sickened by the continued injustice.
“Before I am an athlete, I am a black woman,” Osaka wrote. “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.”
Her decision coincided with protests erupting around the US — including by other prominent athletes — in light of Kenosha, Wisconsin police officers shooting the 29-year-old Blake in front of his three children.
“Watching the continued genocide of Black people at the hand of the police is honestly making me sick to my stomach,” Osaka wrote. “I’m exhausted of having a new hashtag pop up every few days, and I’m extremely tired of having this same conversation over and over again.”
Blake was shot seven times in the back and is paralysed from the waist down. In October, he was moved to a spinal cord injury rehabilitation centre in Chicago.
