Racial Slurs in Sport

Its interesting now that Asians are making headways in professional athletics that they are receiving degrees of racism from other professional athletes within their respected sport. Take Shaq’s comment about Yao. He on camera deliberately insulted Yao on his culture and language by speaking gibberish in order to imitate the Chinese language. I felt that the comment was immature. Shaq may have tried to be funny, but I think he was being really naive to respecting other cultures within the NBA. Shaq being an African American himself, you would think that he was would a little more sensitivity to racial comments. However, Shaq’s comment could be considered as teasing compared to the comment that Jan Stephenson made about the Koreans on the LPGA tour. She comprised a bunch of assumptions about how they are hurting the tour. She said that they cant speak English, are emotionless, and are dominating an international tour. However, all these comments were in relation to how they are hurting the American tour as opposed to the international tour. I felt like her remarks were nowhere near a joking matter as Shaq’s were and she was personally attacking the LPGA players. I would have to disagree with her comments. From working with the Jamie Farr this year, the Korean players are more than great with the pro am players as well as do well with the media. I think that the implementation of knowing basic English helps with publicity in America, but I only agree with the rule because it is the international language. If English was not the international language, then I feel like English speaking player would have to know the basic language of every country they play in too.