I can't go another day without mentioning this on my blog...the Spanish have continued a long history of being unapologetically racist and both their men's and women's basketball team have taken pictures of themselves making the "slit-eyed gestures" so often used to mock people of Asian heritage. As The New York Times writes,
No one involved in the advert appears to have considered it inappropriate nor contemplated the manner in which it could be interpreted in China and elsewhere.
In fact, while some members later apologized, others members of the Spanish men's basketball team have simply stated that they thought their Chinese hosts would consider it a harmless joke or even an honor.
Meanwhile, this reminded me and many others of some of the very offensive, racist, and hateful epithets screamed by Spanish soccer fans at players during games. Clearly, they have a problem and brushing this off as just a little joke gone wrong is not going to fix anything.
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3 comments:
hmmmmmmmm--
given the fact that Spain is widely seen as Europe's ne'er-do-well younger brother, I would think they would be more sensitive to stereotypical thinking.
so sad.
to fool themselves into thinking [if they truly do and they're not just making excuses] that this is excusable or an **ahem** 'honor'-- that's some kind of joke, right?
I've had students from Spain tell me that I shouldn't go there. They are actually more than a little reminiscent of Texas...their economy centering on the murder of animals, they walk around in cowboy boots (a generalization of course) and they don't like minorities and foreigners.
Really? I lived in France for a few years, and got down to Spain twice, and I loved it there! The Spanish language assistant that taught at my high school was one of the nicest ladies I've ever met?!
Don't use this picture to judge the whole country. I guess I did see a little more "macho-ism" than we may be comfortable with here in (parts of) the U.S.A., but just because the basketball team was being less than racially sensitive, don't denounce the whole country!
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