"Astros' Yuli Gurriel Suspended For Racist Gesture — But Not Until After World Series."
So racist gestures matter... but not too much.
Here's where we talked about this controversy yesterday, where I linked to an L.A. Times column by a man whose ancestry was half-Hispanic, half-Japanese and who tried to convince us that racial epithets were not as serious coming from a Spanish-speaking person as they'd be if they came from an English-speaking person and "Even racist-looking gestures, like the one [Yuli] Guerriel made, aren’t made with the same level of vitriol. Not close. Of course, just because something is done playfully doesn’t necessarily make it OK...."
It's bad but not that bad. Suspension... but after the World Series is over.
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77 comments:
This is a post adult America.
I think this is standard because the union contract allows for a hearing on any suspension and the hearing would not happen until the WS is over. But better baseball people here would know more.
"Smile when you say that!"
Well, his bizarre haircut is more offensive than his gesture, and he should have been suspended for that.
Well said, Donald. This was an interaction between two adults.
Do you know what would have happened a decade ago? If the pitcher was really, really peeved at this gesture, the next time the guy comes up to bad, he would have gotten the first ball in the ribs.
Maybe there would be a bench-clearing brawl, maybe not. But it would have been taken care of.
Instead, MLB is playing "we will make you care," to the detriment of the game.
As I was reading what you wrote, this is where I thought it was going --
Here's where we talked about this controversy yesterday, where I linked to an L.A. Times column by a man whose ancestry was half-Hispanic, half-Japanese and [half-something else]
Everyone knows, only whites can be racist.
It's sort of like sexual harassment is not as bad coming from a Democrat as from a Republican! It's all so simple, I don't know why anybody has trouble with these concepts!
In a society of true equality, racial gestures like this would not need to be policed, because much of the imbalance in society that would let those go unanswered would be eliminated. But political activists don't want that, because they'd lose their leverage in the public sphere, like when the March of Dimes rebranded itself after the polio vaccine was developed. Can't stop the money flow, man.
As long as I know that I am going to be held to the most rigorous standards of guilt, I am going to call them out on their violations, on whatever it is. Make them live by their own rules. Because they sure as fuck are going to make us live by them.
I'm amazed at how quickly this racist action has faded from the news.
At the root of it, they justify their hypocrisy by telling themselves that they can't let us ever win, on anything. "It's not over until we win" I think some Democrat said somewhere with the initials RF.
Even wishing that they would all just shut up and play baseball can be construed as racist regarding this incident. Fuck 'em all.
Which was as recently as right up till that moment Bill.
My life would be bereft of meaning without racism to fight fight FIGHT!
So when is the L.A. Times columnist going to be suspended for compounding the evil?
Dialect jokes are the best. There's one in Eagle vs Shark (2007) where a New Zealand guy tells a joke in Australian dialect. I'm surprised it got past the censors.
Institutionalized discrimination against Asians is the norm in many of our Universities.
"Students like Mr. Jia are now the subject of a lawsuit accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian-Americans in admissions by imposing a penalty for their high achievement and giving preferences to other racial minorities."
Bad teeth is a better Japanese insult. Hands held in front of mouth with fingers pointing verious directions.
"Everyone knows, only whites can be racist."
Specifically, white males with an R beside their name.
“A few years ago, this guy (Obama) would have been getting us coffee,” Clinton is quoted as saying in “Game Change,”
As Jackie Robinson once famously said,
"Me Chinese, me make joke,
Me put pee-pee in your Coke"
Cut him some slack: that was considered funny back then.
And he was black.
I am Laslo.
I think Japanese can be racists in the right situations.
Discrimination against Asians actually strengthens the smart Asian stereotype.
The Asians actually admitted are so much smarter than the rest of the student body that all the top students are always Asians.
Both sides absorb this.
The original gesture was crass and ignorant, but the exculpation that the other player offered seemed more calculated and bigoted. Will he get any censure from the league?
"Well, his bizarre haircut is more offensive than his gesture..."
Why shouldn't a man look like an erupting volcano or a bunch of celery?
It amazes me that men who will mostly be seen with caps on choose hairstyles that don't work unless that cap is off. I'm thinking of the baseball players with a full head of long hair.
But Gurriel's hairstyle makes sense: It's completely short on the sides and looks right with the cap on. When he takes the cap off, there's this wild long part that becomes visible.
It's an improvement of the mullet idea of "business up front, party in the back," because the "party" aspect of the hairdo is only visible when he's got the headgear off, and the headgear is never off when he's in business mode.
Unless you consider the dugout time. But what's nice about the camera shots on the dugout is that it sort of seems like their private space (like the locker room), and we feel that we're getting a behind the scenes look at them, sometimes horsing around and razzing each other or being slightly bad in some way.
It was in the dugout where Gurriel made his "slanty eyes" gesture and called Darvish "el Chinito."
The Asian sense of superiority actually gave them immunity from white racism. "Those idiotic white ghosts are are so deranged they think they're better than us. Can you believe it?"
"It's an improvement of the mullet idea of "business up front, party in the back..."
The Mullet cannot be Improved: it is as perfect as a red 1986 Camaro.
I am Laslo.
I fear for the day there is an exposé on the hateful County-based prejudice in professional Darts. That will take all the joy out of watching those warriors battle at 5am.
The gesture took less than one second, was done in the dugout, and it was over. It was caught on camera, but seemed almost like it was taken through the curtains of someone's house, from the vantage point of a voyeur with a long lens. Only the still shot of it can make it hang around long enough to talk about. This is getting So. Stupid. Give it a rest.
Puig licks his bat, sniffs his bat, grinds his bat, sticks his tongue out all the time like he's Miley Cyrus, even has his fookin' tongue shaved into his hair and dyed. I think he looks disgusting and is a bad example to kids. Even the picture of his cute little boy has the little guy licking a ball. That's going to help him in Kindergarten!
The only way Gurriel can be forgiven for this is if he takes a knee during the National Anthem, and turns his back on the displays of the flag, the police, and the military. THAT will show 'em!
But what's nice about the camera shots on the dugout is that it sort of seems like their private space (like the locker room)
What happens in the dugout should stay in the dugout. Cup adjustments on the field should be minimized.
Remember when Sergio Garcia made that comment about Tiger Woods and fired chicken? That wasn't so bad because he is Spanish! We have to internalize all of these rules people!
But honestly, who doesn't like fried chicken?
It shouldn't even be an issue. They should take care of it on the field. Country of wusses.
Wait, so one POC supposedly made a "racist" gesture at another POC? Unpossible!
Next, they're going to tell us that Asians harbor prejudice against blacks. No way!
Somebody made the decision to perpetuate that one second diss. Why? Anything to keep things stirred up in the country.
Most interesting to me is apparently neither player speaks English.
Any baseball guys here know how many non-citizens are in major leagues?
Neither player in infected with American political correctness, yet.
And, why were people holding signs displaying what they "stand for" last night? Seemed like throwing shade at NFL. Whose stupid idea was that? Now we gonna have NFL and MLB hating on each other also?
Well, it was actually Fuzzy Zeller, a popular tour pro until that exact moment.
Why shouldn't a man look like an erupting volcano or a bunch of celery?
LOL! Did a spit-take with my coffee on that one.
The Asians actually admitted are so much smarter than the rest of the student body that all the top students are always Asians.
Good point -- a reminder that all the dumb Asians stay home. And, most assuredly, there are a lot of dumb Asians. More than a billion of 'em, I'm told.
What.
What would we do without the LA Times to tell us what’s racist and what’s not?
The one guy should've just done one eye because the other guy is only half Japanese.
But the good news is: the results of the World's Series are tainted. The bad news is the tainting makes "American Way" Superman cry, and you don't his tears getting on your skin.
"you don't WANT his tears" Important difference.
Uh oh, Ann called an Hispanic baseball celery!!!!!
"I think Japanese can be racists in the right situations."
As anyone who has lived in Japan for any length of time knows, the Japanese are decidedly prejudiced against other races and other cultures, but probably not racist. It really doesn't matter whether you're white, black, Chinese or Korean, you're not Japanese, and that's what counts. You'll also be treated with respect unless you try to take out their daughters or open a business next door to their own or try to enter a "Japanese only" bar or restaurant. Interestingly, the ultimate Japanese teenage girl's rebellion against her parents is a foreign boyfriend, and a lot of them will find one for that purpose. That said, theirs is also the most generous, courteous, honest, and law abiding society that I have experienced. A couple of examples: I was hopelessly lost in Atsugi trying to find a golf course early one Saturday morning and stopped by a service station to try to get directions (but even with directions it's problematic to navigate unless you understand how to read kanji street signs.) Instead of trying to direct me, the lone attendant at that station closed up shop, got in his car and led me the five miles to the golf course. That's what I mean by generous and courteous. Also, once I left a 35mm camera on a bench at a train station and didn't remember it until I was several stops down the line on the way to Kamakura. So, I got off and took the next train back to the station and found that someone had already turned it in to lost and found. Even property crimes are rare. All in all, I was fine with the prejudice because I was a foreigner living in their land, and they had a culture which allowed my 15 year old daughter and her friend to be able to get on a train and take the 45 mile ride into Tokyo, spend the day there and then safely get back home without me worrying one minute.
BTW, I suspect the Japanese pitcher was not upset because he felt Gurriel was the one who lost face in the incident, not him. If one should ever want to understand Japanese culture, there's a book about Japanese baseball titled "You've Got to Have Wa" by the former US major leaguer Warren Chromarity (sp?) that one should read. Wa is the Japanese word that sort of translates to "go along and get along." Everything that he describes regarding the Japanese pro baseball game is directly transferable to Japanese society as a whole. They're a wonderful people in my opinion.
I always think of natives throwing virgins when I read "volcano", so she was double racist.
I see no reason why you can't skew the teams. If one of them fell down the stairs at a hotel, would you postpone the World Series until they were better? If one got a drunken bender and couldn't make it, do you wait until he sobers up?
Actions have consequences, and part of being on a team is not taking actions that screw your teammates.
The largest Hispanic non-profit activist group was named LA Raza: THE Race. They have gotten tons of cash from our government, especially during the Obama years, from all kinds of government setups, front door direct to back door.
These are the crazy years.
Ah, the contortions these folks twist themselves into. Personally I find this all very amusing, in a schadenfreude way.
-sw
A Japanese would be far more insulted by being called 'Chinese' than by the slant-eye gesture.
If the sportsmediaswine continue to rant about this, they will ruin a perfectly wonderful World Series. They are truly biting the hand that feeds them. As Dave Roberts, LA manager, who is half black, half Japanese, said: "Lets make it about the players on the field".
A nice background piece on Peruvian-Japanese animosity.
Note that Fujimori referred to himself as "El Chino".
So calling attention to the epicanthic fold is racist? Who knew.
As our first commenter said, post adult America.
I agree 100% with Bill P... dude deserves to get drilled. However, I don't think either team wants to give the other a free baserunner. It's been a great series with lock-down pitching and defense punctuated by offensive explosions.
Kinda my point Jaydub.
It's not that bad because NOTHING is bad enough to mess up the World Series. You can have the flag; you can havwe the cross; you can even have the McDonald's arches. But as Red Smith said, Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection."
Right, Jon. Some of us love baseball a lot more than we like controversy.
"Kinda my point Jaydub."
I guess it depends on your definition of race. The Japanese, Chinese and Koreans are all of the same race (Mongoloid), but are of different ethnicities. So, the fact that all three of those ethnicities are prejudiced against each other cannot be attributed to racism. My point was no matter the race (Caucasian, Mongoloid or Negroid) the Japanese were prejudiced against any ethnicity that was not Japanese, regardless of race.
donald - Fuzzy Zoeller made the racist comments about fried chicken back in 1997 and Sergio Garcia did it again in 2013.
I really can't believe two pro golfers did that on two separate occasions. Mind blowingly stupid. Then again, pro athletes aren't known for their exceptional intelligence.
Mariko thought about that. Then she said, "Do all Portuguese call us monkeys? And Jappos? Behind our backs?"
Rodrigues pulled at the earring he wore. "Don't you call us barbarians? Even to our face? We're civilized, at least we think so, senhora. In India, the land of Buddha, they call Japanese 'Eastern Devils' and won't allow any to land if they're armed. You call Indians 'Blacks' and nonhuman. What do the Chinese call Japanese? What do you call the Chinese? What do you call the Koreans? Garlic Eaters, neh?"
"I don't think Lord Toranaga would be pleased. Or Lord Hiromatsu, or even the father of your wife. "
"The Blessed Jesus said, 'First cast the mote out of your own eye before you cast the beam out of mine.'"
She thought about that again now as she watched the first mate whispering urgently to the Portuguese pilot. It's true: we sneer at other people. But then, we're citizens of the Land of the Gods, and therefore especially chosen by the gods. We alone, of all peoples, are protected by a divine Emperor. Aren't we, therefore, completely unique and superior to all others? And if you are Japanese and Christian? I don't know. Oh, Madonna, give me thy understanding.
Shōgun by James Clavell
Just how far to you take the punishment of boorish behavior? Where is that line? And why does it deserve attention at all? Are we all so vulnerable and delicate that every rudeness must be answered harshly? The implementation of these sanctions are remarkably selective according to political correctness. This incident is just overblown hysteria.
Japanese were prejudiced against any ethnicity that was not Japanese, regardless of race.
And many, if not most, still are. Outside of Nazi Germany I can't think of any people more concerned with racial pride and purity than the Japanese. Even so, I admire them greatly.
"And, why were people holding signs displaying what they "stand for" last night? Seemed like throwing shade at NFL. Whose stupid idea was that?"
They were "taking a stand against cancer." It is indeed stupid virtue signaling, but it has nothing at all to do with the NFL. They did it last year as well. Everyone stands with a sign with the name of someone they know who has or had cancer to "raise awareness." Because there might be people out there who have never heard that Cancer is A Bad Thing.
It's all silliness, but as Jon pointed out, nothing can ruin the World Series. The play on the field - which is all I am interested in - has been terrific. Both of these teams are excellent and fun to watch.
Sao Paulo, Brazil, has been called the second largest Japanese city in the world.
Most immigrated there BEFORE WWII.
Sao Paulo is Brazil's technical center.
Baseball is generally not played in Brazil.
At least he didn't do it while white.
I knew a fair number of jocks in high school and have a few in my extended family. The ones I knew were not always dumb - in fact, several of them were excellent students who were quite successful later on in life - but they were highly competitive and mocked each other and opponents in a way I found quite brutal when I was a teen. Those insults included ethnic slurs. I was comparing male jock culture with teen girl culture (which can also be very cruel but in more subtle, indirect ways). Male athletes are not teen girls.
Those were high school football and basketball players. When the insults cut too deep, things were settled on the field. I imagine pro athletes have the same mentality. In fact, it's probably worse because the level of competition is so much higher.
I realize that the abuse that Jackie Robinson endured during his first year of playing in the majors went way beyond normal jock razzing. Gurriel's stupid joke was not in that league. It was a stupid joke. It's been blown out of proportion because the media reacts like teenage girls.
jaydub said...
"I think Japanese can be racists in the right situations."
As anyone who has lived in Japan for any length of time knows, the Japanese are decidedly prejudiced against other races and other cultures, but probably not racist. It really doesn't matter whether you're white, black, Chinese or Korean, you're not Japanese, and that's what counts.
1: That's the definition of racism
2: Ask someone who's ethnic Chinese or Korean whether or not Japanese people can be racist
How good of you to finally relax ridiculous PC standards.
I assume I can expect the same treatment if I offend.
I still don't understand. Does the pitcher have slanted eyes or not? I read that he's Japanese. All the Japanese people I know or have seen have slanted eyes. Why is it "racist" to recognize that fact?
This is getting So. Stupid. Give it a rest.
No.
The left must be bludgeoned with the same rules they force on the rest of us.
Otherwise, they'll never stop.
They need to pay. Good and hard.
And, why were people holding signs displaying what they "stand for" last night?
It was Stand up to Cancer, and the names were people close to the sign holder ... like a mother, father ... etc.
"It's bad but not that bad. Suspension... but after the World Series is over."
Coming from academia where such hand-slaps are standard practice, not sure why Althouse is feigning such surprised distaste.
Sounds like whining from a closet Dodger fan to me.
In olden times, the half-Iranian Yu would surely have been called The Twirling Darvish.
I generally think that suspensions for being politically incorrect are dumb. This could have been handled quite easily with a conversation after the game that we do not do that sort of thing. If that did not work, someone would throw at him until he got the message. Sports organizations are not the morality police and if they are they are absolutely awful at the job considering some of the people they have employed. Keep the suspensions for actual on-the-field stuff like cheating and fighting and that sort of thing.
And if he was suspended for the World Series, I suspect it would be 1 game. Suspending him for the rest of the World Series would be very severe, especially for a non-game infraction, roughly like a 50 game regular season suspension. It is also highly unlikely the appeals process would get done in time.
Everything that he describes regarding the Japanese pro baseball game is directly transferable to Japanese society as a whole. They're a wonderful people in my opinion.
Well, wonderful, other than that rape of Nanking, the killing of captured Austrian nurses, the beheading of thousands of Chinese, Pilipino, American, Australian, British, etc....
I understand what you are saying. But all of us wonderful people and cultures have a dark side.
Poor guy, he thought he was escaping a totalitarian society. ..
I suppose I should add that committing a crime is also a perfectly good reason to suspend someone. Acting like a jerk, even a racist jerk, is not a crime. Yet.
Darvish might pitch game 7 (if there *IS* a game 7).
It'll be interesting to see what happens when Gurriel comes to bat, especially if the bases are empty with two outs. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Darvish fired a 95-MPH fastball at his head.
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