Notes: Spanish Olympic Men’s Hoops Squad Ups the Racist Ante (Disney-ESPN-ABC says “Ho-hum”)… Update - J. Kidd Responds; Pau’s Rebuttal Weak
August 13, 2008
Update: I just heard that the Spanish Women’s Olympic Basketball team allegedly struck the same pose as the men for their team photo. I’m searching for more news…
Additionally Jason Kidd speaks out:
“We would’ve been already thrown out of the Olympics,” he told Yahoo! Sports. “At least, we wouldn’t have been able to come back to the U.S. …There would be suspensions.”
And for his European peers, well, Kidd suggested, “They won’t do anything to them. It’s a double standard.”And for his European peers, well, Kidd suggested, “They won’t do anything to them. It’s a double standard.”
…Kidd talked at Team USA’s practice. He was curious how the Spanish players were spinning this.
“They have some explaining to do,” he said. “They’ll come up with something good.”
The idea that Stern shouldn’t act on this behavior because it falls under FIBA and Spanish rule is ridiculous.
“We could say that too, but at the end of day, we are still representing the NBA,” Kidd said. “No matter if we’re saying (the actions) have nothing to do with it. At the end of day, we have to go back home, and our jobs are there.”
And here is Pau Gasol’s rebuttal:
After practice Wednesday, he suggested that he wasn’t troubled with the photo on the merits of longstanding racial implications as much as he thought it wasn’t funny. The sponsor pushed and pushed them to pose, he said. They broke him down.
“It was supposed to be a picture that inspired the Olympic spirit,” Gasol said.
Olympic spirit, eh Pau? Maybe he speaks a truth we don’t know about?
Finally, there this from an NBA GM:
“The simple question is, ‘Would Stern and the league hold the American players accountable?’ And I think the answer to that is yes,” one NBA general manager said. “So why wouldn’t he hold the ‘other’ NBA players accountable – unless the rules only apply to the American players.”
…and this from another NBA team executive:
FIBA is the governing body for European basketball and they’ve already dismissed this as a non-issue. That’s FIBA’s right, but the NBA has a different responsibility here. It has to take the higher ground.
“It would start an international riot if we did it, but they aren’t us,” an Eastern Conference executive said. “It’s low-rent stuff, but FIBA won’t do squat, so (the) NBA would show them up with any punitive action. I would be shocked if the NBA does any more than condemn (the) action.”
Show them up? How about show some consistency? If Stern does not suspend Gasol, Calderon, et al., the Lig definitely has some explaining to do. It will also be interesting to see if this incident affects NBA player movement to European teams.
I almost forgot this little nugget:
Ironically, Spain’s Olympic basketball team is co-sponsored by Li-Ning Footwear, a Chinese company founded by Li Ning, a former Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics. The Organization of Chinese-AmericansGeorge Wu, deputy director of the group, called the photo “disturbing” and “divisive.” Wu said: “It is unfortunate that this type of imagery would rear its head during something that is supposed to be a time of world unity.”
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Ahhh, yes, so in inscrutabo Euro-prean fashion, we fee-o it is necessa-wy to poo eyes to wook Chinee….
Now, if I really meant the above - make that, if I wrote it as a total joke, can you imagine the cries of, “Racist!” coming from all corners of the Internet?
Well, the Spanish Men’s Olympic Basketball team did the equivalent. Except with the Spanish and their reputation for racist acts towards other races, their team photo is not funny in any way, shape, or form.
In fact it is beyond demeaning in every way shape, and form.
I saw this first in the Guardian, England’s newspaper of choice. Then I checked out all the news stories on the team’s act and found the ABC (Disney-owned) report. The headline is straightforward enough and is also subtly damning:
Spain’s ‘Slant-Eye Photo Stirs Ire
But Disney, perhaps with an eye toward its cash cow, ESPN, airing upcoming Olympic Games, and/or in keeping with its tradition of racism (which includes ESPN) always has an out when it comes to the reporting of matters such as these. Check out the sub-head:
Spanish Ad Pic ‘Divisive’ but Unlikely to Jeopardize Madrid’s Bid to Host 2016 Games
Divisive? Is that all? How about “Unseemly.” How about “Disgusting.”
How about, “Racist.”
And then the copy editor who wrote the headline just had to add a caveat letting people know that acts like that of the Spanish team are just fine with the world by letting us know that Madrid’s bid for the 2016 Games will not be jeopardized.
I often remind people that copy editors are paid to, among other tasks, to write headlines and sometimes the headlines and the articles do not jive. In this case, though, the headline, sub-head and the article are in synch. The article’s author, David Schoetz, backs up the assertions that the “slant-eye” act is just a drop in the bucket by talking with someone from the International Olympic committee, right?
No.
Schoetz corroborates his info by speaking with Rob Livingstone, “Toronto-based journalist who founded a Web site devoted to tracking the International Olympic Committee’s host city deliberations:”
Rob Livingstone, a Toronto-based journalist who founded a Web site devoted to tracking the International Olympic Committee’s host city deliberations, said the poor judgment by a small group of Spanish athletes is unlikely to derail the city’s Olympic hopes.
“Typically, these kind of things have little impact on the bids themselves,” Livingstone said, citing a voting body of 100 members driven by a broad range of political and business agendas — not individual incidents, however unflattering they may be.
“Lots of people are asking, ‘How is this going to impact Madrid 2016?’ My reaction is it won’t,” Livingstone said. “Whether or not it should is another issue.”
Livingstone pointed to Beijing as an example of the host city that has faced stiff criticism for its human rights record in Tibet from the moment it expressed interest in hosting the games right through today’s Olympic action.
The actions of few are not a reflection of the country, right? Just before going to China let’s take a team photo where we pull at the corners of our eyes to ‘look’ Chinese - and take the photo on a dragon decal…. right?
Well, to Schoetz’s credit, he does chronicle Spain’s recent history of racist acts toward black athletes:
This is not Spain’s first racial controversy involving sport. In 2004, FIFA, the world ruling body in soccer, fined the Spanish Football Federation nearly $90,000 after Spanish fans showered black English players with racist chants during a “friendly” match in Madrid.
The governing body for Formula One auto racing announced in April an anti-racism campaign after British driver Lewis Hamilton, who is black, was racially taunted by racing fans in Madrid. A group, wearing dark makeup on their faces, wore shirts that read “Hamilton’s Family.”
However, he does not at all get explicit with what was said during the soccer friendly. Schoetz also conveniently leaves out the fact that Spain’s former national soccer coach, Luis Aragones, had some choice words for soccer superstar, Thierry Henry:
Spanish sport has been mired in rows over racism in the last few years. In November 2004 black English footballers were subjected to relentless racial barracking from home supporters in a match in Spain. Before the World Cup there were calls for Luis Aragones, then Spain’s football coach, to be sacked after he called Thierry Henry a “black shit”.
In the aforementioned contexts the “acts of a few” seem more like a national-collective proclivity towards racism.
The problem here is, ABC needs to roundly condemn the Spanish Basketball team. But ABCESPN D-I-S-N-E-Y M-O-U-S-E only believes in upholding racist acts, if for nothing else, because pissing someone, some corporation, or some country with financial pull might impinge on their ability to pursue the almighty dollar or in the case of Spain, euro.
Yet, even within the dry reporting of the team action it is ethical, even responsible for Schoetz to mention the Olympics as a place where peoples of all cultures, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds come together and put aside their perceived differences and attempt to take away something positive from the experience of spending days and nights in the Olympic Village.
But apparently this ethos does not apply to the Spanish Men’s Basketball team. And from the acts of hundreds of thousands of Spanish spectators, it does not apply to the Spanish athletes of the Games as a whole.
One thing I do wonder: does Pau Gasol tell Kobe Bryant, “I love you, man, because you’re not a ‘nigger,’ you’re a black guy?”
Comments
40 Responses to “Notes: Spanish Olympic Men’s Hoops Squad Ups the Racist Ante (Disney-ESPN-ABC says “Ho-hum”)… Update - J. Kidd Responds; Pau’s Rebuttal Weak”
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What I also find annoying about this is the clever bait-and-switch on the punishment the Spanish athletes are likely to face. Saying “This isn’t likely to affect site selection” is kind of like me saying “Matt Jones won’t face the death penalty for being caught with cocaine.” That option was never on the table! Sure, they won’t be punished that severely, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t do anything wrong. That make sense? It’s a clever tactic to distract attention from the fact a wrong was committed by pointing out that a greater wrong was not committed. I’ll have to remember it the next time I mess up at work, ha.
Two words for the Spanish Team: 1) Lebron 2) James. Oh wait, two more:
1)Kobe 2)Bryant.
That’s it in the way of punishment the Spanish team is gonna get — an ass whipping from Bron, Kobe, Dwade and company.
Gotta hang our disgust on that small pleasure.
I cannot believe that a company founded by Walt Disney would ever turn their eyes away from a racist act. Didn’t he believe in equality for all?
Glad you call these fools out on this brotha D. Man I just can’t believe the out right racism!! I mean China is the host country and you are going to come out and do some ignorant crap like that.
So let me get this straight some how the boys on the US team are the ones that are not cultured or disrespectful of the chinese. I swear.
Then ontop of you got 4 current NBA players on the spain roster who were in on this mess. Calderon, Gasol 1 and 2 and Rudy F. Plus Navaro an ex NBA baller and Rubio is a future. That doesn’t look good at all.
Big brotha Gasol and Calderon should have known better. My thing is how is Gasol and Calderon will explain themselves when they get back in the states. Since they both play in Canada and LA which has a large asian population.
Media will just cover it up and move along. No story by next week.
Anyway Dwil then I go on websites like realgm and you have folks from spain saying its no big deal. Well I guess not when you have a history of killing indigenous people in south/north america and carribeans as well as enslaving africans. Yeah right no big deal. They need to get over it like Hamilton and Thierry Henry I guess huh??
I wish China would have whipped their @ss yesterday.
Sure, but in the big scheme of things, I have the feeling that the Chinese dissidents in jail right now would rather put up with this than be in jail. In no way should this impact an Olympic bid by a Spanish city. If things like that could, we would not seen Atlanta, Salt Lake and LA hosting Olympics either. Were not the Winter Olympics once in “Squaw Valley?”
True Story
When I graduated from medical school, there was an article about me in the LA Times.-June 3 or 4 1993, metro section, for those interested, Kind of a “South Central Boy Makes good” story. It centered around the concurrent events of my graduation while coming from an environment that didn’t typically produce top 10 graduates from top 5 medical schools, and a reunion that happened between myself and a man who had been, when I was about 10 years old, a mentor through the Big Brothers club of America.
The story got around and sure enough, I got a call from Disney. They wanted to meet with me about making my life story into a movie.
It became evident that their plan was to tall a sort of “great white father saves poor but full of potential black kid from a life of poverty and incarceration.” I told them that Dave had been of only minimal impact in my journey. I told them that I’d happily do the story if they were to leave Dave out altogether and focus on what really happened, or to tell the story with Dave but simply make him black instead. Needless to say. They said no, I walked and that was that.
Kev-
Damn…. I am so glad you let us in on that. People just do not believe it when I talk about Disney-ESPN as myth-makers and breakers, with an emphasis on myth. I receive so many damn private emails talking about them as if they and their writers and producers and editors are mere innocents…. that a story like yours would never happen at Disney or ESPN.
Thank you Kev.
Man Disney is crazy. Quick! who played the lead in the Lion King, a movie set in Africa? No it wasn’t Levar Burton.
Disney? Of the old racist cartoons with dancing apes singing in “black” voice? That Dishey?
Disney? Of the company that refused to release Michael Moore’s “Farenheit 9/11,” which had to then be independently distributed by the Weinsteins. That Disney?
@Kevdog, thanks for sharing. That’s like the perfect story to put this all to bed. But, still, why am I not surprised?
KevDog,
They tried to go Kipling on you and do a “white father saves the black savage from himself” story? D@mn. I wish you’d gotten them on tape.
Just read the updates.
For the love of God fuck David Stern to a million pieces. I. Cannot. Stand. That. Fool.
Let’s talk about politics AFTER the Olympics — isn’t that the company line? Colangelo is gonna make Coach K bench Jason Kidd. Shushhhhh.
Not surprising that the Spanish would do this. Where are all the calls saying that they are a bunch of rich, spoiled hoodlums? You know if the American team did that, the little General Stern would be livid. He might can’t punish the entire Spanish team, but the ones in the NBA, he can certainly do something about them.
grace - yep, the same Disney that made Fantasia, Song of the South, and Dumbo.
ESPN is just following the path that its parent company has carved.
KevDog - Sounds like typical Disney, hell, Hollywood for that matter. Glad you told them to kiss your a%%.
KevDog
Man, I’m going to have to find that story now.
T3-
On J Kidd… I was just telling somebody that Kidd just lost his PT… I’d love to know how the press caught him away from the omnipresent K-Col duo…
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The same Walt Disney who had his artists derive over 200 designs for German SS patches (removed from Google about three years ago).
Yep.
Disney like Henry Ford was an avowed anti-semite.
To all of those who think the athletes don’t notice how they are treated and percieved, check out the update with Kidd’s comments. Right from the pack mules mouth. And trust me, this is not an isolated perspective.
Y’all don’t for a minute think the Chinese will foret do you? That China won’t demand some kind of restitution, do you?
After all spain wasn’t fucking with some ass backward knee-grows, whose only portion of the European fairy tale they’ll ever remember in this situation is turn the other ass cheek.
Any culture tha tmakes 50 year plans as a norme, will also believe…”revenge is a dish best served cold!”
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my what a wonderful day!
Plenty of sunshine heading my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
I am glad Kidd addressed the hypocrisy of this. The Gary Payton Dream Team was demonized for being trash talkers, etc. The Spanish team poses for a racist photo and everyone just looks the other way.
Insane.
Yes, go JKidd!!!
And so true. David Stern needs to do some shit, but it is very unlikely. Besides all the corporate reasons already laid out, when Darko Milicic went on a rant for the ages last year — there was no penalty. This situation is worse because it disparages a race, but the darko thing might be an indicator.
And have those racist “six flags” commercials stopped airing yet?
The Lil General should do the White thing and order the Spanish players who play in the NBA to attend Diversity and Cultural Sensitivity Training. Oh, I forgot that the Lil General ain’t Right!
This is absurd. Asians in general take too much abuse in this format. I’m personally hoping these fools get thrown in a Chinese prison for several years.
As for the NBA, what do you expect from a group of out of touch white men, that instituted a dress code for basketball players. Most of the offices in America are going casual and these guys are wearing suits it’s laughable.
I’m really tired of having smoke blown up my azz by these league commissioners about morality and crap … when they can look past incidents like this one for convenience. This is almost as bad as Roger “I’m destroying evidence before congressional hearings but you need to stay out of trouble” Goodell.
ESPN/Disney all you have to do is look at that series they tried to put together with the drugs, sex, violence, and stereotypes, I believe it was called Playmakers.
So I guess none of you will take your daughters to see the frog princess about the lil black chambermaid.
Oh I forgot them bigots at Disney changed it to the princess and the frog. And now the lil black girl is no longer a maid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frog_Princess_(film)
Anyway I couldn’t agree with you guys more about those bigots at disney.
Oh and T3, Dwil and Modi I am so glad that kidd had the heart to speak out. Sadly he will pay in the end. Might even get him blackballed once his contract is up.
Anyway F%$# Stern and the NBA. If both Gasols, Rudy F and Calderon don’t atleats get a call from stern its straight BS then.
[…] It seems that Spain’s Olympic Team’s now famous “slanted eyes” team photo (check out yesterday’s breakdown by D-Wil) has jogged my memory. We often like to hold athletes accountable — or at least the black […]
Two more words for Gasol and his pointy-hooded teamates: 1)Dwayne 2) Wade.
Trust me. That’s all the punishment Gasol and the other NBa players on the Spanish team are going to get for this racist behavior — an ass whipping by DWade and his friends. That’s it. So let’s salve ourselves with that. I guess.
I just read an interesting point on this at another site. A poster noted that possibly the Spanish do not have the same history with the Chinese and Chinese stereotypes as Americans do, so this act may not have seen like a big deal. I actually understood that they were trying to say “We’re all Chinese” I just thought hte execution was horrible. But, I’m wondering if that’s because of my American outlook on the racism Asian people face. I wish somebody would actually find out what type of treatment Asians have received historically in Spain, and find out if there is anyway these players should have known this was offensive.
Big man I doubt it. These are the same spanish who throw bananas at black players. The same ones who have had horrible race relations when it has come to so called people of color the last 500 years (along with england and france).
I hear the Spanish tennis team has done the “slant-eyed” mocking gesture, too.
Oh, dear. But I’ve heard that Spanish men like black women, so that should make me feel better that they’d throw bananas at me and bang my wife, right?
I hear you brotha Phil. I am sure some of the players on spain like chinese women. But liking to sleep with black/chinese women and liking chinese and black people are 2 totally different thing.
Origin,
If you’re a man and you like women of another race as a sex object, that’s different than marrying a woman of another race because you love her. Absolutely right. If you’re dating a woman of another race because of some fetish fantasy? You deserve to have your @ss whooped when that lady’s older brother finds out. If you honestly love the woman and respect her, then treat her like you’d treat your mother or sister and take care of her.
TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK!!
PAU GASOL of the LOS ANGELES LAKERS & JOSE CALDERON of the TORONTO RAPTORS
EMAIL THE NBA (you will have to register)
http://www.nba.com/email_us/
WRITE TO THE NBA:
David Stern
The National Basketball Association
Attn: Fan Relations
645 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022
EMAIL LOS ANGELES LAKERS:
http://www.nba.com/lakers/contact.html
WRITE TO LOS ANGELES LAKERS
Los Angeles Lakers
555 N. Nash Street
El Segundo, CA 90245
USA
Phone: (310) 426-6000
PAU GASOL WEBSITE (No email contact)/Sponsored by Nike
http://www.paugasol.com/
PAU GASOL’S NIKE SPONSORS
Nike World Headquarters
One Bowerman Drive
Beaverton, OR 97005
Phone: 1-503-671-6453
EMAIL:
http://www.nikebiz.com/contact/
EMAIL TORONTO RAPTORS
http://www.nba.com/raptors/contact/index.html
TORONTO RAPTORS ADDRESS:
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Ltd.
40 Bay St., Suite 400
Toronto, ON
M5J 2X2
CANADA
LIST OF MANAGEMENT/OWNERS TORONTO RAPTORS
http://www.nba.com/raptors/news/mlsel_management.html
JOSE CALDERON’S webpage
http://www.josemanuelcalderon.com
EMAIL:
email@josemanuelcalderon.com
Damn, Origin, don’t tell me you’re giving the Dutch and the Portuguese and the Italians a pass. Please don’t tell me that.
Naw brotha Temple wasn’t giving them a pass………….was too busy typing. Then I forgot to mention them too.
And Pretty much all of Europe.
Everyone,
That pose is just confined to the Spanish Basketball team:
http://gawker.com/5037034/spanish-tennis-team-also-strikes-chinky+eyed-chinaman-pose
I meant to say that the pose is NOT just confined to the Spanish Basketball team.
Spain is frikkin’ stupid. I don’t think China would have any problem engaging in shenanigens to keep them from getting gold medals. And the IOC wouldn’t say a damn thing if they did.
“Spain is frikkin’ stupid. I don’t think China would have any problem engaging in shenanigens to keep them from getting gold medals. And the IOC wouldn’t say a damn thing if they did.”
Couldn’t agree more.