Message to Spain: Time to Grow Up

At least they're not throwing bananas at soccer players of African descent.

Recently, the Spanish Men's Olympic Basketball Team posed for a full-squad photo. An act that should have been innocuous enough, especially considering the frequency with which it occurs, went slightly awry--as some of you may have heard. The photo, shot for an advertising campaign run by Li-Ning Footwear, featured the entire team pulling its collective eyelids to the sides to play on the "slant-eye" appearance of the Chinese company's billion-strong consumer audience.

Henry Abbott, author of the widely-read basketball blog TrueHoop, shared his opinion on the matter yesterday:

"To my way of thinking, that photo was the exact kind of callous, stupid, and juvenile behavior that used to take place all over the world, but has slowed dramatically now that people have begun to realize that different kinds of people all over the world are complex humans with emotions, too. Call it political correctness if you want, but here, in the United States of 2008, I think just about everyone knows this photo would hurt feelings.

"But I really don't know much about the frame of reference from which these young Spanish men made the call. By their comments in response, the players all seem to think of themselves as innocent and open-minded. They were being 'affectionate' said one. The idea that it was racist was 'absurd' said another."

Quite simply, Abbott is dead on. It's the inability to see the effects of your actions on others that marks immaturity. Why not have a food fight? Someone else will clean it up. Who cares if I make fun of her acne? She should get it fixed if she doesn't want us to laugh.

In my somewhat limited experience with Spanish culture (I've spent about two months in the country), immaturity on racial issues seems to be a serious problem. Absurd advertising that demeans entire cultures is nothing new. While in Spain I saw countless products featuring chocolate babies who couldn't possibly be misconstrued as anything other than a caricature of a monkey infant. Just take a look for yourself.

Deeply disturbed after my first viewing of such repugnant packaging I asked an educated, elegant, enlightened world traveller, Pedro, who hails from Leon, how such a product could sell?

"We don't think like you Americans here," he replied. "We don't think everything is racist."

Now, not thinking like an American is nothing to be ashamed of, but employing willful ignorance is. In short, this train of thought is stupid--we ought to know better.

So how could this possibly happen just in time for the world's most international event? As Chris Chase writes, under the auspices of Yahoo.com's Fourth Place Medal blog, it's nothing short of incredible:

"It's baffling that nobody involved in the picture -- from the photographers to the players -- even seemed to consider that this ad would be looked at negatively. Did it not occur to somebody that it might not be a good idea to mock a large portion of the continent before the world's largest athletic competition that, by the way, happens to take place on that continent. Were they not aware of an invention called "the Internet" that allows pictures taken in Spain to be transmitted all over the world for the eyes of everyone?"

So, for the untold number of people involved in planning and implementing this advertising campaign, as well as those who claim to look past racial differences so far that racism isn't racism, I think it's time to grow up. After all, it's the 21st century, and at least where I'm from, 21 means adulthood.