Sports boycott against police violence on Blacks an attention-grabber

Thursday 27th August was quite a day in sports, as most major North American leagues shut down in support of protests against the continued plague of police killings and maimings of unarmed black men. It was an unprecredented and more-or-less-spontaneous response, galvanized by initial unilateral actions by the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team and by black Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka on Wednesday. Most other sports either joined the bandwagon or were shamed into action on Thursday, although things look as though they will be more or less back to business-as-usual on Friday.
It was a powerful spontaneous action, quite effective in creating a conversation on the subject, as well as an indication that sports is becoming more and more politicized. The general support the boycott received, from the professional sports bodies and from fans, is an indication of just how much the politcal landscape has changed in the USA since the rather bemused reaction to Colin Kaepernick's protests in 2017. It has also annoyed the hell out of Donald Trump, which is always a good thing.
Ms. Osaka, for one, seems to think that the job is done. When she pulled out of the Western and Southern Open (a second rank competition anyway) on Wednesday, she issued a combative statement, saying that she was "ready and prepared to concede the match". (The statement also said that her boycott was "in support of racial injustice and continued police violence", which was a bit unfortunate, but we know what she meant. Calling it a "continued genocide of Black people at the hand of the police" is also an extremely loaded phrase that is going to do her no favours with people who have connections to historical genocides.) A further statement on Thursday, though, indicates that she will continue with the competition on Friday, giving the impression that she was persuaded by the tennis authorities. Her comment that, "in my mind, that beings more attention to the movement" makes very little sense, though - how can giving up on a protest and going back to the status quo bring more attention than carrying through with the protest and depriving a major sports competition of its world number 4 ranked competitor?
Anyway, enough kvetching: her initial action was one of the most attention-grabbing moves in what is proving a very interesting period in professional sports, and she deserves full credit for that.