After participating with other players in a video posted by the American Frances Tiafoe on social networks, the French Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has pointed out that “supporting George (Floyd) is not just standing behind the American black community, it is much more than that.
Tsonga refers to the movements and demands for justice that have occurred in the world after the death of 40-year-old African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis (United States) on Monday of last week.
“This kind of behavior is unbearable for me and I think it should be unbearable for everyone,” he explained in an interview with France Info. “The whole world has been hit by this incident, which divides people. And being behind poor George (Floyd) is not just being behind the American black community, it is much more than that for me. “
“I was one of the only children of an immigrant parent in my elementary school. I’ll let you imagine the rest, “said the French player, referring to how he spent his childhood.
The son of a white man and a black woman, Tsonga said that he considered himself “black and white.”
Nicknames at school and then insults. Then the identity checks on the street when I arrived at the National Training Center (CNE) in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Meanwhile, my classmates were never checked, “he commented.
“I was rejected from the institutions even though my friends were allowed to enter. It was painful for me. And even people on the street hid their bags when they saw me. That hurt a lot, “he added.
Tsonga says in the interview that early in his career he didn’t understand why his father’s Congolese origins were being mentioned so much in the media. “We already had Yannick Noah, the French-Cameroonian,” but strangely we never heard Cédric Pioline, the French-Romanian. It doesn’t take a genius to find why.
“They taught me never to present this as a claim, never to give the ignorant room for controversy,” he explains. It’s true that I never talk about it, but I’m not naive about it. This tragedy (George Floyd’s death) is too much. It will make you want to scream louder, scream my pain. EFE. (HN)