Dobleve

Today Spain’s Olympic basketball team got some bad press in the English news (MSNBC, The Telegraph and The Guardian) over a publicity photo published in the Spanish daily sports newspaper Marca, below, showing the entire team making a slant-eyed face in what one can only guess is supposed to be a joke regarding the Olympics in Beijing.

When I was growing up in the US this gesture was offensive and I’m pretty sure it still is; it is to me today. However, I live in Spain now and if living abroad has taught me anything (besides how to be humbled) it is that you can’t judge one culture by the norms of a different culture.

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen Spanish people make this slant-eyed gesture. I’ve seen friends (who I don’t consider racist) do it, I’ve seen Japanese people do it and I’ve seen the usual drunken idiots do it. The news articles reminded me that we have a photo from a night out with some friends last year that Shannon and I both thought was horribly offensive.

We don’t know the 2 people in the center (in pink and blue), but the man on the left, the tall guy in back and the woman are our friends; the men are Japanese and living in Granada, the woman is Greek and was visiting for a few months. They didn’t seem bothered by the gesture.

I suspect the basketball team didn’t do this photo out of malice but that doesn’t make it any less offensive to me; however, I’m not Spanish so its not my place to judge.