>> A lot of tiffs, a lot of dings. >> Well, just hang on one second.
Did y'all see what I saw? When Serbia played Thailand, two players from the European squad
did a gesture that can only be taken in one way. The ill-intended racial abuse of one's opponent.
It is flat-out inexcusable. What you see on your screen, is two Serbian players,
number 7 is Ana Jaksic, and number 31, Sanja Djurdjevic, ABC News Australia has more.
>> It's the offhand gesture raising eyebrows. A Serbian player seemingly
making a slanted-eyes gesture. >> Very, very, very, very bad.
The cleanup from the Volleyball
Federation of Serbia is beyond pathetic. >> Calling the gesture unfortunate and
apologizing, not just to the Thai team, but the country, as a whole, and anyone else impacted,
too. It continues, but, please, don't blow this out of proportion. Sanja only wanted to
show her teammates, let's start playing defense like them now, she didn't mean any disrespect.
>> Yes, let's play better, and mock our opponents, in the process, for how they look. This is dumb.
>> It's a bad look for a team who came under fire in 2017, over this photo released by the
International Volleyball Federation. That time the whole team made a similar gesture,
after learning they'd qualified for the World Championships in Japan
>> Wait, so, upon qualifying, when the host nation is an Asian country,
they did a slanty eyes gesture? Come on man. The Serbian statement continued.
It all ended up as a simple misunderstanding, in a friendly atmosphere between the players of the
two teams. Yes, the simple friendly misunderstanding of, racial abuse.
This is a failure in PR 101. To reiterate, they're relying on the defense of, the pull
at her eye was meant to be a gesture to signal her teammates to tell them to watch and play
defense the same way the Thai team was. So, just curious, when Yuli Gurriel of the Houston Astros,
did this gesture, in the World Series, to mock Dodgers' ace Yu Darvish, who's from Japan,
was he just saying, I need to play better like you?
It just felt like, man, again? Like we're so used to this.
Jason Chu, a Chinese American rapper based in LA said, people don't even pause. They think that
this is acceptable, socially, to target Asian Americans in this way, or Asians,
in general. In a match between Colombia and South Korea, Edwin Cardona did the gesture.
He was also thinking, man, we just gotta play like them, right? No,
South Korea's captain even called it racist behavior, and absolutely unacceptable. Then,
of course, Cardona gave the non-apology apology. It was not my intention to disrespect someone,
a country, or a race, he said in the video, according to a HuffPost translation.
But if someone felt offended, or it was interpreted that way,
I apologize. The Colombian player lamented that the incident was misinterpreted,
though he offered no explanation for what he meant by his gesture.
Back in Colombia, after Cardona's racism showed itself, two broadcasters thought it would be wise
to continue at a TV show titled La Kalle, saw its hosts imitating Cardona's racist gesture.
The hosts of the show and their guests lifted the corners of their eyes making a
slanted eyes gesture and laughing. In 2008 the Spain men's basketball team did the slanty
eyes gesture. The image showing the players pushing up the outside corners of their eyes,
was taken before the team left Spain for Beijing.
On Telemundo, hosts, James Tahhan and Janice Bencosme, did the gesture, as well.
In a statement, Telemundo suspended the two hosts. Just a few months ago,
Sacramento teacher, Nicole Burkett, followed in the footsteps of the Serbian players,
doing the same gesture in a Zoom class. Quote, if your eyes go up, you're Chinese.
If they go down, they're Japanese. If they're just straight, you don't know she allegedly
said during the class, reported the Sacramento Bee. The physical impression isn't what is so
frustrating with this gesture. For many Asian Americans, the gesture represents the concept of
otherness. The Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome is the concept that, regardless of where Asian-Americans
were born and raised, their American-ness is often questioned, based on their physical appearance.
This is best exemplified by the question every Asian-American has received at some point,
where are you from? Or, your English is great. It's like when a black athlete is described
as, well-spoken. When others reduce your entire identity to a simple facial feature,
it can have a lasting psychological effect.
Frank Wu, author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White, and the one who coined the term,
Perpetual Foreigner Syndrome, wrote this during the 2008 Olympics after the Spanish
men's basketball team posed making the gesture. Few who regard themselves as the
members of the mainstream, understand what it is like to be ashamed of one's parents,
to be constantly striving to be just like everyone else without ever being able to fit in.