cosmostein wrote:There is a world of difference between ignorance and racism.
The question really is what was the purpose of the picture?
Was it to demean a race? or was it a very poor attempt at humor?
I would imagine that it was a very poorly thought out and rather stupid attempt at humor, but I don't think it was the intent of the Spanish National Basketball team to offend people of Chinese heritage all over the world, and that makes it a very ignorant act rather then a maliciously racist one.
yes and no. Ignorance and racism are not mutually exclusive from one another. Racism is derived from the product of ignorance and intolerance. Rather, racist acts can be dichotomized into malicious and non-malicious, based on the parameters of intent (cause) and impact (effect). I think the problem that individuals are grappling with in this thread is where to draw the line between what constitutes racism and what doesn't. If we break up cause-and-effect into the 4 possible outcomes:
1 - bad intent and severe impact (an example would probably be a lynching or an assault on an individual due to his/her ethnic background). This is probably the most overtly racist scenario that would be universally condemned.
2 - bad intent and minimal impact (an example would be driving on the road, being cut off by a particular ethnic individual, and using a racial slur). Is it still an act of racism to use such a slur? Absolutely.
3 - unintentional and severe impact (here is where the line blurs--the act has to constitute the perpetrator's actions to be consequential but predicated on the notion that the perpetrator did not willfully know that he/she was committing a racist act. This often falls under the reverse-racism category, where an individual may have a favorable disposition towards a particular race or ethnic group and not be aware that he/she is acting in a racially discriminatory fashion. Take for instance, theoretically, a manager who has to hire two equally competent accountants who have the exact same credentials. But the manager hires the ethnic East Asian instead of the African American accountant because she believes that "East Asians" are naturally good at math. Is this action racist towards the African American? Absolutely. It's ALSO a racially discriminatory act towards the East Asian, even if the outcome weighs in his/her favor.
4. - unintentional and minimal impact. This is where the Spanish advertisement likely falls, if we assume the best case scenario (I am not willing to cut them that much slack for reasons I've stated earlier, but also because the middle finger is almost universally acknowledged as an insult--the fact that the slant-eyed gesture was done by all of the basketball players may be coincidental, but also dampens the likelihood of "probable cause"). It could very well be that they did not mean to offend the Chinese and other East Asians with this action, but it doesn't make the action any less offensive, particularly when there is a pretty strong consensus in the global community that to mock the facial features of a given ethnic group is racist. In the event in which the Spanish basketball team was truly ignorant, it is still necessary to apologize in order to make this a constructive learning experience so that future mistakes (by the Spanish or anyone else) are not made in the future. Furthermore, it will allow the everyone to move on from this incident and not like this action have any future adverse effects on Spain during this Olympics or in their attempt to host any future Olympics.
