Naomi Osaka's Controversial Cartoon Character

20-year-old, Naomi Osaka, professional tennis player, defeated Serena Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open Final over the weekend, marking her first career Grand Slam title and the first Japanese to win a Grand Slam Singles Title. Following this triumph, Osaka reached a career-high ranking of Number 7 on September 10^th, leading many new sports outlets to cover her story.

Osaka has dual nationality, Japanese and American. She moved to America at age 3 with her Japanese mother and Haitian-American father. While Osaka has embraced her bi-racial identity, many media outlets have only shown light to half of her cultural identity. Overseas media overwhelmingly only report about her Japanese roots, taking the blackness out of her cultural and physical narrative.

There was large uproar following the controversial Australian cartoon depicting Serena Williams as a barbaric figure with certain physical characteristics exaggerated in size, but what people failed to give as much attention to was Osaka's character depicted with fair skin and blond hair, far from an actual representation of her physical attributes.