Naomi Osaka is the number ten ranked female tennis player in the world and the highest paid female athlete for 2019. Last week, she “announced on her Twitter feed that she was boycotting her semifinal match at the Western & Southern Open against the Belgian player Elise Mertens to protest the shooting for Jacob Blake. Ms. Osaka wrote: ‘Watching the continued genocide of black people at the hands of police is honestly making me sick to my stomach.’ She argued that her move would hopefully ‘start a conversation in a majority white sport.’” https://news.yahoo.com/tennis-pauses-protest-103050856.html.
Putting aside the fact that she clearly has no idea what a “genocide” actually is (just ask the Jews, Gypsies and Armenians), she’s certainly a spoiled brat who didn’t refuse to play at some cost to herself. She was well aware as one of the stars of the sport that in the current climate the match would just get postponed for a day or two since she didn’t withdraw from the tournament. So it sure wasn’t any cost to her. Had she actually withdrawn from the tournament and forgone a payday maybe one could give her a little credit. In fact, she got a lot of lefty publicity from her stunt, so she benefitted immensely. She is a fine tennis player and hopefully will be for years to come, but she certainly overstepped her brief here.
Then this week, she appeared at the opening rounds of the U.S. Open with seven face masks bearing the names of blacks allegedly murdered by racist police scum, one to wear for each round of the tournament. https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/tennis/osaka-keen-to-spread-awareness-about-racial-injustice/ar-BB18zKWA?ocid=msedgdhp; https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/tennis/naomi-osaka-s-blm-masks-aren-t-just-a-protest-they-re-the-future/ar-BB18B62j?ocid=msedgdhp. She supposedly wants to “spread awareness about racial injustice.” “When asked about the masks Osaka said during a post-match interview, ‘It’s quite sad that seven masks isn’t enough for the number of names.’”
Our objection is not that athletes should be seen and not heard, that’s not the point here. It is this. Until a year or so ago, she had both Japanese and American citizenship. Her mother is Japanese, her mother Haitian, and she apparently “identifies” as black. She was born in Japan, but moved to Florida when she was three. Last year she decided to renounce her American citizenship so she could represent Japan in the Olympics. She could have kept it and represented the US, but for her own reasons she chose not to. Well, that choice has some consequences, one of which is that she has, in our view, forfeited any right to criticize the US like she’s actually a citizen of it and suffers because of it.
Our view is that someone who has affirmatively renounced her US citizenship (or any non-citizen, for that matter), doesn’t have any business complaining about the alleged racist history of the country nor current events in the country. She isn’t complaining about racial injustice in Japan, is she? If she wants to be Japanese, then let her, but there certainly do not appear to be many actual Japanese people railing or protesting about the racial situation in the US like it’s a burden to them personally. We’ll listen, whether we like it or not, to a lot of guff from a lot of people if they have the standing to complain. But not from entitled rich people who not only are not citizens, but who once were but renounced their citizenship. If this country isn’t good enough for her anymore, then she can just shut her yap about its perceived shortcomings. So sayonara Naomi!