News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Sept. 25, 2020: Caribbean roots tennis star, Naomi Osaka, not only won the US Open again. Now she is listed as Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People” – again.
The 2020 list, released this week, puts Osaka, 22, born to a Haitian father and Japanese mother, among the “icons” on the list. It is the second year in a row that Osaka has featured on the magazine’s list of the most influential people in America and across the globe, with 18-time Grand Slam champion Chris Evert writing about her for last year’s edition.
And it wasn’t all about her tennis. It was mainly because of Osaka’s use of her platform to put the spotlight on some of the US victims of police brutality as a black woman in America.
“Seven matches. Seven masks. Seven names,” the Time magazine article on Osaka begins. “….To use her gifts and talents, her voice and her platform, to honor the preciousness of Black and brown lives. It took humility and grace to point beyond what she was doing, winning on one of the biggest stages in her craft, at something more important. She reminded us that we can all resist the excuses that guard us from giving love. Whatever power we have, the most lasting and life-giving way we can steward that power is by using it to lift others up. Especially those who aren’t exactly like us. Because we need each other. We need the fullness of humanity. Sports can uniquely beckon this truth. If somebody like Naomi can have the courage to use what she has to call people higher, then we can too. You can too,” wrote Maya Moore, a fellow 100 lister, wrote for Time.
Osaka, who flew to Haiti this week to begin taping a documentary for Netflix, was also revealed to be the highest-paid female athlete in the world by Forbes Magazine last month.
