Just hours after a hard-fought victory over Anett Kontaveit in Wednesday’s quarterfinals of the Western & Southern Open, bi-racial Naomi Osaka that plays for Japan announced that she was leaving the tournament to raise awareness about “the continued genocide of black people at the hand of the police”, as 29-year-old Jacob Blake was shot seven times and injured by police on Sunday in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The half-Haitian half-Japanese Osaka, who attended Black Lives Matter protests this year, explained her decision on Twitter:
Before I am an athlete, I am a black woman.