For the past couple days, the Spanish Olympic Team has been internationally-criticized for the controversial advertisement in which their entire basketball team poses as “slanty-eyed Asians.” Their apology? Well it reads like a stubborn teenager’s diary – i.e. the media’s overreacting and I have Asian friends and our team has a Chinese sponsor so we’re obviously not racist, duhh!
Since this blog isn’t the right place for me to go over the definition of racism, I’ll give my basic opinion: this gesture was incredibly stupid. Stupid and disrespectful. Because I can understand celebrating the Beijing Olympics by displaying the Chinese dragon and wearing red uniforms (the Chinese color for luck), but slanty eyes? Come on. Even if the ad wasn’t intended to be offensive to the host country, this is definitely not a case in which imitation is the highest form of flattery.
And, apparently, “Asia-mocking” (as Gawker called it) is a trend in Spain, because the tennis team thought they’d capture their own “Look Ma, I’m Asian!” picture. Pair this incident with the fact that China is steadily becoming an economic threat and I can’t help but cringe at the yellow peril that seems to be lingering in the western air.
I can’t believe these fools did this. I saw this the other day. Made me so mad!!
Another one bites the dust!
If there is anything I learned this summer, it’s that Europeans can be incredibly racist. I don’t think it is just Spaniards against asians.
It seems to me that western-born and/or western-raised asians seem to care about this a lot more than those of us that are actually from there. In Taiwan, we don’t care at all about this. Actually, most of us think it is a pretty funny picture. The mainland news outlets do not care much either.
I guess we just have more real things to worry about. It must be nice to have no worries so little things like this seem important.
Lin, I appreciate your insight as an Asian living in Taiwan. I was curious how the gesture would be received elsewhere, so thanks for your input.
However, regarding your last statement, people in the west can be more sensitive to issues involving race because we live in places where no single color or ethnicity undoubtedly makes up the majority of the population. Since we are more conscious and aware of such differences, real problems with race and discrimination occur more often. Therefore, “little things” like this don’t seem so little.