<p>"Spain’s Basketball Federation has published a good luck advert for their men’s team, the world champions, in which they stand pulling at the sides of their eyes in a slit-eyed gesture.</p>
<p>There is no obvious intention to upset their Olympic hosts in Beijing, but the irresponsible picture is likely to cause controversy and could be interpreted so as to lead to accusations of racism.</p>
<p>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 ****”. And last year Lewis Hamilton suffered racist abuse during testing for the Spanish grand prix near Barcelona.</p>
<p>Spain play their first match in the Olympic basketball competition against Greece at 7.30am BST today."</p>
<p>^what’s that supposed to mean? are you saying that because they’re big on NOT being racist that this doesn’t matter?
or are you saying that they’re not good at any important sports, because they also just one the EuroCup (world cup for europe… or the superbowl on steroids)</p>
<p>All I’m saying is that they were under a fascist dictatorship until just over 30 years ago. I don’t expect much from them in terms of enlightened thinking. Doesn’t mean that I don’t think they’re good people or a good country.</p>
<p>To anyone claiming that it doesn’t matter, it’s not like this is an isolated incident. There is a major problem with racism in Spanish sports-- even against their own players (Samuel Eto’o of FC Barcelona comes to mind). To have this done during the Olympics is pretty tasteless, given Spain’s past history of this.</p>
<p>Remember that there are probably more internal problems (Catalonians vs. Castillians) in Spain rather than racial ones.</p>
<p>Considering that there aren’t many Asians in Spain, we can’t really tell if this was an act of malicious racism or some seriously misguided and naive attempt at humour. I think it’s more of the latter than the former. If they were truly racist, they wouldn’t publish it in a magazine because nowadays, racists know to hide their stupidity, not propagate it all over the world for everyone to deride and mock.</p>
<p>My point is that if anything, Spaniards are still regionalists who haven’t quite yet embraced the concept of the modern nation-state. There’s a difference between regionalism and racism.</p>
<p>All they did was slant their eyes. NEWS FLASH: ASIANS ACTUALLY HAVE SLANTED EYES! And I’m pretty sure it was just them having fun, taken the wrong way. Why would they seriously put on a commercial to attack another race? That’s just stupid. </p>
<p>Watermelon and friend chicken are stereotypes.</p>