Dutch, eh? Over fond of the Christmas traditions?
Me? I try to find German tourists to not mention the war to.
It’s funny because lots of people like to talk about Tiger as a “not really black” guy–emphasizing his Asian and European roots over his African origin.
But I’ve never heard of anti-Asian or anti-white racism being directed at him.
He won’t really be a “Cablinasian” guy until that happens, IMHO.
Tiger got claimed as black in the Great Racial Draft of 2004.
With a very specific history in a very specific culture, not in Spain. And we view wearing it for Carnaval (not to play a black character, in which case it is completely inappropriate if you can find a black person to cast) as making fun of the caricature. Do you understand the difference between making fun of a stereotype and making fun of the people stereotyped?
Is there anything good to say about gefilte fish?
I understand why people living outside the United States are a bit baffled about the racial stereotypes surrounding fried chicken and African Americans. But there is a long history of using watermelon and fried chicken to highlight some of the worst racial stereotypes of African Americans here in the United States dating back to at least the early 19th century. In my experience there has been no similar tradition of using fish & chips, pasta or even sauerkraut to denigrate the English, Italians or Germans. Outside of some wartime jokes in the case of Germans and sauerkraut of course.
The following passage is from Three Years in Arkansaw: Beats All Books You Ever Saw by Marion Hughes published in 1904 where the coroner is examining a large black woman discovered in her bed dead for cause of death (pgs. 85-86):
You might look at this “humorous” anecdote and think to yourself that other than a certain word it really doesn’t seem that bad. But this is just one example of how fried chicken was used to reinforce negative stereotypes of blacks in the United States. There are many many more such examples.
In the Netherlands I can assure you nobody knows about fried chicken and black people being a thing, at all. The only reason I know is the SDMB, and even then if someone in Europe mentioned I wouldn’t connect the dots. It’s not a part of my cultural background, it’s just a weird fact I happen to know. If a Dutch person were to say that they would be joking about him being American. They would be referring to KFC, and the joke would, in intention, be the exact same as “I’ll take him for MacDonalds, make the American feel at home, haha”.
Saying “coloured” in Dutch doesn’t work, it makes it sound like you’re talking about someone who is rainbow coloured. But sometimes people awkwardly say “dark”, which is a totally weird and misguided attempt at being politically correct, but not necessarily racist. Neither is saying “neger” racist, so often Dutch people get these things completely wrong when speaking English. It means they have no feeling for the foreign language and its culture, not that they are racist.
You get the same thing with foreigners speaking English all the time, they use words like “bitch” way too much and without considering that it could offend. They just don’t have a feeling for the language, and they imitate language they have heard on tv, without knowing the connotations and background.
Actually, the Americans in this thread pretty much illustrate the point with comments like “Blackface is a very specific look with a very specific history. Ignorance of that history is not an excuse.” That’s the same thing, but just from the other side of the pond. It’s taking your own culture as the universal standard and trying to apply it to another place, or another language.
Do Americans know the racial stereotypes relevant to the Netherlands? Can’t you just imagine cooing over an Indonesian baby and saying “what a cute little peanut”, and you’ve just said the equivalent of “what a cute little nigger-baby”?
Just for science and in the interest of fighting ignorance I asked several friends over chat who they thought stereotypically ate fried chicken, these were their responses:
“Fat people?”
“Americans?”
“Americans from uhm… Kentucky?”
“Fat Americans!”
“People who eat junk food or something?”
They’re all in their late 20s, familiar with pop culture.
ETA: It’s not “far less offensive” in Europe, it’s just not a thing.
ETA2: I don’t even know what “fried chicken” implies. Is it deep fried, or in a frying pan? What is it served with? Is it breaded? It sounds nice.
Okay, I think there are a few separate issues.
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Are most Europeans aware of this stereotype? No, the majority isn’t. All Euro dopers have been unanimous on this point. Please trust on this one. Question has been answered.
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Was Sergio Garcia aware of it? I would say he was. Otherwise what was the point/joke in saying what he did?
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Was he aware of how offensive it was?
Here I move into conjecture and controversy. I would say that it’s not quite the same situation as if he had been an American making the same remark. Yes, I’d say he knew it was a racial stereotype, but I think he might not have been aware of how loaded this is in America. I think in America there are certain taboo words or stereo-types that are automatic fails in a “room falls silents - did he just say said?” kind of way. European are not necessarily aware of what those are. It doesn’t mean they are not being naive or ignorant, but it 's not the same an an American knowingly using the word or stereo-type.
I wouldn’t expect Garcia to be inherently aware of any particular stereotypes in the US, not being from here and all. however since he is a pro golfer is expect him to be aware that this same kerfluffle happened before between Woods and “Fuzzy” Zoeller.
Black faces too are a typically American issue. There’s nothing inherently wrong or racist in dressing up as black people, without the cultural baggage carried in the USA. There were no black face shows in Europe during the early 20th century (), and in fact, very few black people to begin with. So, it doesn’t make sense to expect that Europeans would se a black face as something particularly racist.
And regarding the OP, it’s not possible to tell whether or not is comment was racist, because we don’t know what he knew. Maybe he was perfectly aware of it being perceived as racist in the USA, maybe he only saw that as regular stereotyping and no more offensive that offering haggis to a Scotsman.
()For nitpickers : I can’t swear there never was a single black face show anywhere in Europe during the early 20th century. What I mean is that it wasn’t a commonly encountered entertainment.
Roll eyes has no place in GQ.
Blackface is a very specific look. If you know enough to use that very specific look I find it very unlikely that you did it by accident. If you didn’t do it by accident you have to know at least a little about it. I defy anyone to look at a picture of Al Jolson in blackface and think it looks just fine.
Just like it is not possible to believe that Garcia didn’t know it was a stereotype to use fried chicken in that context. He has been in the public eye long enough to know that using racial stereotypes when talking about anyone is at best unprofessional.
Loach, actually I strongly doubt the blackfaces from Cadiz would match the specific look of American blackfaces. In Spain it’s usually just “paint your whole face black”, none of that “fat mouth” thing - the first time I saw that specific look was a photograph of Al Jolson, being an adult.
I don’t know how long will this link last, being from a newspaper, but it’s a sample of Spanish blackface. I found it by searching for “reyes magos baltasar cabalgata” and then looking until I found one which was close enough to see Balthazar where the guy playing him wasn’t black. Another one, curiously from the same newspaper.
That isn’t exactly “the Al Jolson look”.
You are talking about the US. The rest of the world is not the US. Nor is the rest of the world talking, or thinking about the US. When people in other countries do stuff, they don’t follow US traditions, they are not considering American customs and they are not performing American blackface.
How much explanation do you need? We do other stuff, stuff that is unrelated to stuff you do. Hard to parse, I am sure, but there are whole countries out there who do stuff without even thinking about Americans.
When you say “peanut”, do you think of ethnic slurs to Indonesians? Should I still be offended either way? Should you actually take this into consideration when you say the word peanut? No? OK, that’s the same thing.
I dislike fried chicken. Too many tendons and bits of gristle and things. Processed chicken breast? Yeah, I’m down with that.
What in the world are you saying?
That the USA is not the center of the cultural landscape of planet Earth?
That there are other <gulp> cultures that differ from ours?
I am going to have to meditate upon this a bit.
Seriously, as a citizen of the USA, I apologize for our somewhat provincial attitude toward other countries and their varied cultures. Heck, if I asked a random person on the street where Indonesia was on a map, I’d get a blank stare at best. Geography isn’t ‘our’ best subject. It isn’t my fault but it is true. We have a vast nation that spans a continent (from sea to shining sea). American children are, of course, taught that there are other people ‘out there’ but by and large the only ones who actually go out and for an extended period of time interact with other cultures and countries are the members of our armed forces. And while that does lead to some cultural understanding over the course of time, it probably isn’t the most friendly way to interact with others.
What Mr. Garcia did was silly, but this is a tempest in a teapot. What Mr. Zoeller was arguably more of an offensive remark because Zoeller is American. We here in this weird amalgam of states have a very difficult to understand relationship with racism. I don’t recollect that Spain had a large slave population about 150 years ago. Perhaps I am wrong, but I imagine Nava can correct me on this point. We Americans like to believe that racism is a thing of the past, but it isn’t. These things linger for generations. It is pernicious and still affects some of my closest friends.
But, that having been said, it is healthy that we are having an open debate about this. In the past, this would not have happened.
Nah, don’t apologise. I really don’t buy that it is all that specific to Americans. I think it’s just more broadcast, it gets out to the rest of the world. I expect the actual ratio of provincial/worldly is pretty much the same everywhere, only places with worse education are worse.
You know who I think are “worldy”? I think the Israelis are. Just my perception of them, I guess. I think they travel a lot and are educated. I might be wrong. How’s that for stereotyping 
I personally don’t know what to think about the whole Garcia thing. We can’t really know how much he knew, or understood. I see kids here who use the word “nigger”, because they see it used in hiphop. I think they know it can be offensive, but they don’t understand the extent, the implications, the background. They don’t know the culture. And they think that if they don’t intend to offend then that is good enough.
There was recently, here in the Netherlands, a huge controversy when a fashion magazine printed an article labelling “niggabitch” a fashion style. The editor was fired, which is quite right, but I think she genuinely had no idea of the implications and cultural background to what she was printing. She might’ve known that it is sometimes considered derogatory, but people in music videos say it all the time in a good way. Having some information is not the same as understanding the very complex web of cultural meanings. It means you should shut up about the subject completely, of course. But then: how do you know you don’t know enough?
In the end, it means that Garcia needs to profusely apologise. But it might not be too far from the truth to say that he didn’t fully understand what he was saying, even if he did know something about the connotation. And none of that does anything for Tiger Woods, or any other black people who are affected by this crap. 
Trouble is, it really really doesn’t looklike poking fun at a caricature… much more like making fun of the individual.
This is a bizarre blind-spot that even educated and otherwise enlightened Spanish people seem to suffer from.
Saying “oh that’s just our culture, you don’t understand” isn’t acceptable… abusing someone due to the colour of their skin is unacceptable, full stop. There are historic reasons why the Spanish are more backward in this regard… until Franco went in 1975 immigration was a lot lower than e.g. England, so as a culture the Spanish have had less time to get to grips with integration. But from an outsider’s point-of-view it’s not simply a cultural issue… it’s ugly and it’s unbecoming of a modern, european democracy.
Presumably the monkey chants common at Spanish football matches are merely playful irony, even when they are only directed at black players?
The ones in Cuba, and most Spaniards aren’t even conscious of their existence (which was illegal, but “illegal” and “not done” are different things).
The monkey chants can and will be directed at people of any color. They’re an insult, but not a color-related insult.
Considering the history of Spain: Moors, Reconquista, and the whole colonization of the Americas and slave trade (particularly the Caribbean), I’d say that Spain has had a lot of time to deal with racism and integration. The racism is there, there is difference between US-type racism and racism in other places (Latin America and Spain, the ones I know). It’s not better or worse, it is different. And applying US-centric logic and thoughts to that is condencending.
Re: Slavery in Spain… Well… 150 years ago, Spain still had quite a few colonies left (at the least, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Philippines). Slavery was not abolished in Puerto Rico (a colony at that time of Spain) until 1873 (140 years ago). So yes, technically Spain (and/or its colonies) had slaves up to that point.