spanish basketball team: asian racism hilarious, horrifying, and sad

on gawker.com: there's an article about the Spanish olympic basketball team justifying their jesture of love to their beijing opponents. when a photographer took the team's picture, the photographer asked the team to give a loving "wink" to their beijing opponents, which the team decided was pulling the corners of their eyes out to make an "oriental expression."

of course, china's been waiting for some sort of apology, but the Spanish basketball team member Jose Calderon, who's also in the NBA, thinks the european media are blowing this way out of proportion and misinterpreting their love gesture. spanish newspapers, in the meantime, are reported to be defending their nations team by pointing out that they've donated money to africa.

spain, i don't know what to tell you. i'm kind of really disappointed. of course, i think it's hilarious that you think a racist gesture is loving. well, hilarious, horrifying and sad.

• hilarious: it's something you would expect a 4 year old to do on "Kids Say the Darnest Things"
  
• horrifying: because if you're the parent of that kid, you don't want anyone to think you taught them that and, as that parent, you would want to make sure your kids knew better
  
• sad: it's not a basketball team of 4 year olds.

LINK

note: i know the there are people that believe racism is an over-exaggerated, over-publicized, over-sensitive subject, but please keep in mind, it's even more hurtful when someone makes physical or cultural [ignorant] jokes and believes that asians should not be offended because it doesn't mean there's any ill will. here's the thing: sure it implies ill will. when you tell me that my people are weird looking, talk funny, eat crazy sh!t, pray to a funny fat man, etc., you're telling us that there's something wrong with us. you don't need to tell me i'm different from the people around me.

and you don't tease people about what you think is right with them, usually. it's not effective to call my supermodely friends "gorgeous" to tease them in a loving way. it's much more effective to call them "tubbo," and it makes me feel better about myself. see. that's how its done.