Jo-Wilfried Tsonga is currently ranked 49 in the universe. (Reservoir: Reuters)
As protests continue to rage on in various states of the United States after the murder of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, former world number five Jo-Wilfried Tsonga revealed on Tuesday that he had been facing racist remarks since he was a child.
On May 25, Floyd, an Afro-american serviceman, make up suffocated to demise by a snowy police force police officer, Derek Chauvin, as the latter kneel on Floyd is neck. Since the incident, variations sodality around the universe have acted in solidarity with the ‘ Black Lives Matter ’ campaign with Liverpool instrumentalists kneeling down in breeding and LeBron James renting to societal mass mediums to mourn Floyd is demise.
Tsonga too opened up about the issue of racism in the wake of the incident in his interview with Franceinfo. The current world number 49 was born to a Congolese father, Didier Tsonga, and a French mother, Evelyne Tsonga.
“I have been regularly confronted with racism, very regularly, and since my earliest childhood. However, I have a black father, a white mom… I am black and white. I was one of the only children having an immigrant father in my elementary school. I let you imagine the rest,” said the 35-year-old.
“I was taught to never put this issue forward. Honestly, I never talk about it, but I am not naive about it. This tragedy is just one too many. Inevitably it makes you want to shout louder, to shout my pain.”
“At the commencement, it starts with small nickname. Then there may make up small affronts, something quite latent. Afterward, I remember consuming been the dupe of, rent is aver, opprobrious check-out procedures, especially identity check-out procedures in the street when my champions make up never checked. I make up refused to mother into premises, while sometimes I go far with my champions,” aver the Frenchman.
READ | ‘Racism is in cricket too, not only football’: Chris Gayle
Earlier, other players from the tennis fraternity like Serena Williams, Coco Gauff, Frances Tiafoe, etc. voiced their opinion about the ongoing protests and called for unity in response to racial discrimination.
Since that incident, Chauvin has been arrested and charged with third-degree murder, and overnight curfews have been imposed in more than a dozen major cities in the US. Because of the escalation of the protests, US President Donald Trump has been forced to take shelter in a White House bunker.