Another Olympic team mocks Asian eyes in a photo

Asian Americans (and Asians around the world) should be up in arms about this. Yet another “official” photo has been found, of an Olympic team posing with its members pulling back their eyes to make them slanted. This time it’s four members of the Argentine Women’s Soccer Team, mocking their Chinese hosts in a photo in a national sports magazine.

All these athletes claim the mockery is affectionate and that no offense was meant. So it calls in tho question a general cultural attitude — in Spanish-speaking countries? In Spain and Argentina? — that allows this kind of display as acceptable. Certainly, I don’t think any U.S. Olympic team would do this for a photo that’s going to be seen worldwide.

So maybe the U.S. is more evolved in racial attitudes than some other countries. I guess that’s good news….

Spanish athletes mock Chinese Olympic hosts in photos

OK, I had to post these two photos, in which Spanish athletes mock Chinese by pulling back their eyes to make them slanty — ha ha ha.

The first is a posed shot of of the Spanish Olympic basketball team. It was used in an ad in a Spanish newspaper, which calls into question not only the photographer, athletes and team management’s judgment, but also the national newspaper’s staff and management. The second photo is of the Spanish tennis team, celebrating after defeating the Chinese to go on to the Fed Cup finals earlier this year.

Man, I haven’t seen that done since I was in grade school — in the mid-1960s, when the expression was “enhanced” by the person sticking out his (or her, apparently) buck teeth and speaking in a heavy, phony Asian accent, saying crap like “ah-so!” and “herro, I solly, no tickee no laundoree.”

You’d think we’d moved past that kind of third-grade cruelty by now, but nope. Not in Spain, anyway.

What were they thinking? Are racial mocking stereotypes acceptable in Spain where they’re frowned upon here? Do Chinese athletes go around finding ways to mock Spanish athletes?

These photos disgust me. Continue reading