Thursday, August 14, 2008

How could you Raul?

By now you have all seen the photo of former Jazz-man and point guard extraordinaire Raul Lopez doing the "Chinese eyes" pose (he is 4th from the right). Media outlets are FURIOUS! How racist! How insensitive! How inappropriate!

True enough, but I must come to Raul's defense. It was inappropriate, yes. But, those of us who have lived in Spain know that, while there is a steady undercurrent of racism (same could be said about the U.S.), most young Spaniards are NOT racist. Rather, their version of what is "politically correct" is much more lax than ours. They make fun of everyone. The Chinese, the Africans, the Americans, tall people, short people, fat people. They simply don't have "prohibited" words like we do in the U.S.
And let's be honest. Raul and friends do NOT even come close to looking like Chinese players, in spite of their best efforts.

3 comments:

Pasty Gangsta said...

Fair points. But I would respond with two comments. First, in this day and age everyone is a bit of a global citizen whether they want to be or not (24-7 television news, the Internet, etc. drives that). This is especially true if you're a professional basketball player and even more true if you're a European basketball player who has spent a lot of time in the States (as many of the Spanish team has). You know what's acceptable behavior and what isn't.

Second, after the fact they should have been more willing to apologize than they were. Gasol got it, but some of the others didn't and insisted that what they did shouldn't have upset anyone. It made them look small-minded and provincial.

Luckily it appears as though this whole thing has blown over and we're not going to have to wade through two weeks of it like we did with Don Imus and the Rutgers team.

P.S. The Spaniards got SPANKED this morning by our Yanks.

Tucker McCann said...

I didn't even read the comment posted above by pasty gangsta. "NOPE!"

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