Spain's BBall Team Needs To Leave NOW

[moonhead]

According to the Mexican Olympic Committee the picture is misunderstood and was not a slur agaisnt the Chinese. In fact they are set to release footage of the photo shoot where you can clearly hear music in the background that spurred on the teams unfortunate reaction. They were just listening to the Vapors "I'm turing Japanese" and got carried away.

I think that in this country we are a little more repressed when it comes to poking fun at or discussing other ethnicities. I doubt seriously that there was any malice in this and we may not fully understand how that was taken in the affected nations.

Or..I always hated Mexi..Nah.

good posting. but it was spain. not mexico.

[Cowboys 4 life]

According to the Mexican Olympic Committee the picture is misunderstood and was not a slur agaisnt the Chinese. In fact they are set to release footage of the photo shoot where you can clearly hear music in the background that spurred on the teams unfortunate reaction. They were just listening to the Vapors "I'm turing Japanese" and got carried away.

I think that in this country we are a little more repressed when it comes to poking fun at or discussing other ethnicities. I doubt seriously that there was any malice in this and we may not fully understand how that was taken in the affected nations.

Or..I always hated Mexi..Nah.

good posting. but it was spain. not mexico.

I always thought they ware the same

[Munboy]

The Chinese team should so totally pose for a picture making big round eyes!!

[moochman]

According to the Mexican Olympic Committee the picture is misunderstood and was not a slur agaisnt the Chinese. In fact they are set to release footage of the photo shoot where you can clearly hear music in the background that spurred on the teams unfortunate reaction. They were just listening to the Vapors "I'm turing Japanese" and got carried away.

I think that in this country we are a little more repressed when it comes to poking fun at or discussing other ethnicities. I doubt seriously that there was any malice in this and we may not fully understand how that was taken in the affected nations.

Or..I always hated Mexi..Nah.

good posting. but it was spain. not mexico.

I always thought they ware the same

Exactly.

[The Artful Dodger]

I hate to say it but Spain in general is a relatively xenophobic place. It's no different from say Italy or Russia but it has been notorious for being racist. There are Fascist gangs in Madrid and a good number of places have strong underbellies of Fascist affiliations, even in the more liberal regions and in fact, just about anywhere you find leanings towards Fascism. Most recently, about a few years ago, a Barcelona striker, Samuel Eto'o, who's a Cameroon national was derided with monkey gestures from the fans (I think it was Atletico Bilbao if I remembered right). For those of you who don't know, I'm of half-Japanese decent and my other side is Catalan (Spaniard) and being a mixed kid wasn't exactly received well initially amongst the Catalan side of my family but they could be worse, could be from Madrid.

For some reason it's almost acceptable in popular circles to make prejudice jokes about Asians. The only more 'acceptable' target of such jokes would be the Jews. I never understood this.

I agree. You look a lot of American media and you find the stereotypical portrayals of Asians for the most part, especially with Asian guys holding a Jackie Chan stereotype with equal parts bravado and goofiness (more doses of it). From my perspective, I think Asians are the most misunderstood minority in this country, mostly to do with the cultural differences being quite different from the Western ideals. In some ways, I'd go as far as to say we're subtly prejudiced against. I think it's unlikely that some fella is going to blurt out racial slurs at me and it's rare to see anyone rude to us but I can sense that other people are more reluctant to befriend us because we're of Asian background. They're timid about confronting the culture gaps and not sure if they want to take that step. In addition, I don't think it's of Asian nature to say they feel uncomfortable about a certain situation because they feel like they'd disrupt something if they did.

As for the Spanish team's gesture, I'd say it's a relatively minor thing I wouldn't fret about personally but it's so pointless. Why pose for such an ad when it has more potential to offend people than entertain? There are some contexts where making relatively irreverent humor has its place and has potential for being well received but I don't think it was the right context. Again, this isn't something I'd bark about in forever and a day.

[dream_017]

And no matter how PC you try to be, somewhere somehow you're going to offend someone in your life.

[beanoX3]

I've been a bit surprised about how much outrage this ad has generated. The funny thing is, most of it comes from non-Asian Americans.

I've yet to see a strong protest from either Asian-American groups or Asian countries. I don't think even China has even said anything strongly about the ad.

[SwiperNoSwiping]

The Spanish gymnastic team should take a picture.

[Free Bagel]

So apparently there was no racist intent. Still, you'd think someone would notice that this could be insulting the country hosting the Olympics they're competing in?

That's because it probably wasn't even all that insulting to them, because the rest of the world doesn't publicly try to appear to be some fake, overly sensitive, super politically correct group that will publicly derail something they don't actually believe deep down like we do in America.

Seriously, they were goofing around, the same way most people here probably do within their group of friends. Get over it. I doubt that a single one of them actually believe anything racist about the chinese. We live in a place where people go on and on about family values in the public eye and turn around and hire a hooker the very same night. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same way with stuff like this, where many of people that berate anything and everything that has to do with race and scream "OMG OMG THAT'S RACIST!!!!!111" every time something not racist, but involving culture or race comes up are the ones that deep down have more of a problem with it.

I'm jewish, so guess what comes up in my group of friends anytime someone uses a coupon at a restaurant or when we're playing a game online and I pick up a bag of money? Big deal, it's a joke, and it's funny. Who cares? As knapp mentioned, this is all the same stuff that we all laugh about on South Park or Family Guy. It's funny, because it's a joke.

Or, in the immortal words of Heath Ledger: Why so serious?

The funny thing is, most of it comes from non-Asian Americans.

I've yet to see a strong protest from either Asian-American groups or Asian countries. I don't think even China has even said anything strongly about the ad.

That's typically how it works. It's not the minority that a joke was about that usually takes offense to it, it's the unrelated populace that like to pretend they're more culturally accepting and diverse than they really are that pretend to take offense.

[flotsamnjetsam]

I think Madrid lost its shot at hosting the Olympics in 2016.


http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hns ... eeqzcotL1Q