Recently, ads ran in Spanish newspapers featuring their men's and women's national basketball teams posing with their fingers pulling their eyes back. Then pictures of Spain's tennis team doing the same thing were found.
Good job – there's nothing like mocking an entire race of people with your Chinky-eyed "tribute."
Who's bright idea was that? Who thought it was a good idea to make a stereotypical gesture and not think that people wouldn't be offended?
This isn't helping your country's bid at the 2016 Summer Olympics. Especially when guard Jose Calderon, who also plays for the Toronto Raptors, makes idiotic ramblings on his blog.
"We have great respect for the Far East and its people, some of my best friends in Toronto are originally Chinese, including one of our sponsors, the brand Li Ning," Calderon wrote. "Whoever wants to interpret it differently is completely confusing it."
In short, because he has friends who are of Chinese descent, it makes this perfectly acceptable.
Bull crap.
It's the same excuse used by countless others who try to justify their racist actions. And that's what this is: a racist action.
I don't care if they meant it in jest and they didn't mean to offend anyone. The fact of the matter is, it did offend people, so they need to own up to it.
And Pau Gasol's half-assed apology doesn't cut it.
"It was something supposed to be funny or something, but never offensive in any way," Gasol said to the press. "I'm sorry if anybody thought or took it the wrong way and thought that it was offensive."
Saying you're sorry if people took it the wrong way isn't apologizing. Just ask the editorial staff at The Campus Press for Max Karson's lame article earlier this year.
Gasol and the rest of the Spanish basketball teams and the tennis team need to do a real apology for doing something that was juvenile and idiotic. Will it erase what they did? No, but it would be a start to moving forward.
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