After participating together with other players in a video that the American Frances Tiafoe posted on social networks, the French Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has pointed out that “supporting George (Floyd) is not just behind the American black community, it is much more than that. “ Tsonga refers to the movements and calls 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 type 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 behind the black American community, it's much more than that for me. ” “I was one of the only children of an immigrant father 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 he considered himself “black and white.” “Nicknames at school and then insults. Then 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 said.
“They rejected me 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 at the beginning of his career he did not understand why the Congolese origins of his father were mentioned so much in the media. “We already had Yannick Noah, the Franco-Cameroonian,” but strangely we never heard Cédric Pioline, the Franco-Romanian. It doesn't take a genius to find the reason. ” “They taught me never to present this as a claim, to never give the ignorant a foothold 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.”