Is making a slitty-eyed gesture racist?

[almostwitty]

To recap, the Spanish basketball team pose for a pre-Olympic-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures in one of Spain's major newspapers. Freelance Madrid-based journalist Sid Lowe points this out in the Guardian, spreading the story everywhere else with predictable outrage in English-speaking media.

To which the Spanish wonder what the fuss is about. The Spanish-language paper El Mundo debates whether the advert was racist, and accuses the British press of trying to smear Spain's good name. One Spanish basketballer apologises, saying "It's wrong to interpret it as racist.", while the head coach says "I don't think it was offensive".

Now, brilliantly, the original journalist who filed the report has filed a piece defending himself against accusations that he had a hidden agenda, pointing out that he never said it was racist. Of course, if you see someone carrying an umbrella, you don't wonder if it's raining or not.

Oh, and here's the Spanish tennis team making a similar gesture. Interestingly, a random sampling of Chinese people in Beijing suggests they aren't that bothered - but then they don't have the history of racial harassment.

Comments

[lmurph524.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I would classify it as racist but is definitely in bad taste.

[babyraven.livejournal.com]

Of course it's racist. What a bad idea.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. racism is about having presupposed feelings and ideas, generally negative, about a race just because of their race. Now gramted, the slanty eye with your finger thing does a pretty bad job of duplicating an epicantic fold, but I'm not sure that I think it's saying anything in particular except that asians have different eyes, which is hardly racist.

[almostwitty]

Then again, it wouldn't work if they were heading to, say, Lima for this year's Olympics.

The main problem with it is that it's generally one of the most obvious ways for ignorant people to make Chinese people (who grew up amongst non-Chinese people) uncomfortable - like, say, throwing a banana in front of a black person. Certainly happened a lot to me growing up but ah well...

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Really? I don't think i get the banana thing either.

Maybe I'm out of the loop.

I mean, I get that it's supposed to be making fun of the chinese. That's clear. I'm just not sure that mocking is the same as racism. Though it IS clearly in very bad taste and not really funny.

[almostwitty]

You don't get the banana thing? Really? You don't think it might hark back to the notion that black people = monkeys?

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Ahh ... I think we have too big an emphasis on the fried chicken and watermelon stereotypes here. I really never see the monkey thing come up anymore.

Though, as Dave Chapelle said, it's unfair to categorize black people as eaters of fried chicken and watermelon ... because those things are delicious. And black people are made to feel like racial stereotypes for eating them. For shame. I'd be pissed if I couldn't eat fried chicken in front of white people.

[almostwitty]

Actually, I feel slightly weird eating rice in front of my bosses. Don't know why...

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Really? That's sort of amusing. Rice is also brilliant. Though I'm biased because I loves me the food.

I just realized, I have no idea about your childhood. Was it big on asian food? A lot of the asian families I knew growing up tried their best to eat traditionally, but some just dropped that for burgers and pizza.

[babyraven.livejournal.com]

To state "Yes, Asians have epicanthic folds" is not racist.

Imitating epicanthic folds for amusement is. How many times have you seen people do it without including the words "chink" or "gook?"

Intentionally mocking the physical characteristics of a certain race is wrong. Period. Add to the fact that that gesture has been historically used in less than friendly ways and... *shrug*

Edited because I ALWAYS mangle the spelling of that word...

[anivair.livejournal.com]

As I said above, it's in bad taste and not funny, I'm just not sure that I'd use the word racist. Still a pretty dick move, though.

Also, given the blanket way that a lot of the rest of the world is thinking of it as not that racist, I wonder if it's cultural. like it was more about the team in china than the Chinese. I don't really know, but the wide acceptance leads me to believe that either lots more people hate the Chinese than I thought or they're just looking at it differently than we are.

[almostwitty]

I'm not sure where you're getting the "wide acceptance" thing from. Certainly the Chinese-Chinese have just written it off as silly foreigners doing silly foreign things, but then they didn't grow up with all the white kids doing those imitations in the playground.

It's certainly racist in the sense that it plays on someone's race.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Well, the chinese didn't seem bothered. Didn't you say that the only people in the world press that were upset about it were americans? AHh, no, you said the english speaking media, sorry.

[almostwitty]

To be fair, I haven't scanned the press in Zanzibar yet...

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I think your media coverage would be more well rounded if you learned a few more languages.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I think it would bother me either. But then I'm not asian and if i were, I might have had a very different experience.

But, dude, the spanish basketball team is so sad that they have to get their jollies where they can. Not only are they the second least popular sport in spain (right before fecalball, which is like basketball, but the ball is replaced with human excrement) but they are shitty even for an unpopular sports team. it's basically Cool Runnings.

[choirgrrl.livejournal.com]

While I thought the pic was in very bad taste, I was wondering what the general thoughts were in Spain. Each country has their own sense of humor or things that are acceptable to do for laughs, perhaps this was right on the green for their culture.
However, whether right or wrong by their standards, they did need to remember that China is the host this year, and poking fun at your host is RUDE- not to mention shows their weak side!