Gracie Gold Apologizes for Racially Insensitive Tweet | Page 2 | Golden Skate

Gracie Gold Apologizes for Racially Insensitive Tweet

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I think it could be something like "Gorudu". (no mockery intended)

I didn't ask how her surname is pronounced in Japanese. I wondered how well can Gold speak Japanese and how well she can pronounce Japanese words, given she expects Asada to pronounce English words correctly.

The things people put into that tweet, people who were not even the target of the supposedly evil mean spirited mockery, and the judgements they pass. It's amazing. It feels so disproportionate, but that's the scourge of the age of twitter and s***storms.

Way to go labelling her a supremacist.

'Oh but it was just a silly joke.'

It's 'innocent jokes' like this that perpetuate this kind of discourse.

Why would you joke about something is a intrinsic part of somebody's identity and that this person has no control over, anyway?

I do agree with what os168d said below that Gold was being more ignorant than malicious but it doesn't make it right.
 

OS

Sedated by Modonium
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Twitter is every press officer's nightmare for their stars and people need to learn to not to put such importance in a tweet. And I don't know... i find people are much too sensitive to the jokes based on racial differences in the US, where as in UK we are more relaxed about it and even joke about it from time to time. I prefer to think it is more of a healthy attitude to acknowledge the differences and poke fun at ourselves. It is all about intention, Gracie is clearly being more ignorant than malicious. It is harmless. Imagine Ally McBeal *anyone remember that show?* put all her crazy ideas into tweets, now I am sure some one somewhere will find some of these tweets offensive without context.

Unfortunately it is just one of those morbid growing pain moments she will need to learn, that most of us (perhaps) all went through when we thought we said something clever, but just came across as crass and we learn to adapt and tries to rectify the situation immediately. It might be share private joke among friends along the same wave length length, but with tweets, it is the whole general public across all sections that need to be considered. Your record can never be removed which is mortifying frankly. How is it different from a criminal record, when you have Uncle Phil playing cop/judge on your tail and even write a national public announcement about your stupidity... lol! Poor thing!
 

Shayuki

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Well, people are pretty oversensitive. In my opinion, accent really doesn't have much to do with a race in the first place, if anything. Personally, I hate the Finnish accent(I'm Finnish myself) and I don't really see anything bad about making fun of it(Doing so myself all the time). Since when do accents have anything to do with racism? ;S People getting offended for everything these days.


Japenese language actually doesn't have a L sound so it is replaced by R. Some voice actors are able to use L properly but I guess it's pretty difficult for most people, many voice actors still don't / cannot do it. I still don't see how the original tweet actually was offensive - It's just a quote without her own input.

Though, I wonder how you would say sandwritch. I thought the katakana was something like sanduwiichi as that's actually a japanese word they use in daily life(borrowed from English)
 
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I'll try to break the argument down:

If you laugh at somebody's inability to pronounce words correctly in your own language (Gold is US American and a Native English speaker), what is implicit in that joke is an expectation that other people should be able master your own language, even though you don't extend the same expectation the other way. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that Gold can speak Japanese and even if she can say a few words, I highly doubt that she can pronounce them perfectly with a proper Japanese accent. Ergo, what she said was that Japanese people should be able to speak English properly (and if they don't, it's 'funny') even though Native English speakers aren't expected to master Japanese. That's what is offensive.
 

OS

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I'll try to break the argument down:

If you laugh at somebody's inability to pronounce words correctly in your own language (Gold is US American and a Native English speaker), what is implicit in that joke is an expectation that other people should be able master your own language to a high standard, even though you don't extend the same expectation the other way. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that Gracie can speak Japanese and even if she can say a few words, I highly doubt that she can pronounce them perfectly with a proper Japanese accent.

What was implicit in that joke was that Japanese people should be able to speak English properly (and if they don't, it's 'funny') but Native English speakers aren't expected to master Japanese.

The logical conclusion of the above is that Gracie considers English language to be superior to Japanese. That's what is offensive.

Or she could just be ignorant and found accents in general funny, like when you go to a strange place and people speak differently, that can be cute and funny! It is not necessarily derogatory or mean spirited like how people can find Bart Simpson funny all over the world and put up an accent! (It is certainly not intended to be anti American!)

I recently went to Japan, and I find myself having to put up a Japanese accent when order western food like Hambagaaa with Kechapu, otherwise people don't understand. I do the same when I goto Singapore and call food according to Singaporean accent/Singlish, and I can easily imagine myself in Gracie's shoes tweet something like this to my friends. I call it being localised, it is certainly not meant to be insulting. Problem is with communication, there's intention, and there's receiving/understanding, with tweets there's the judgement on the full ramification of what you might also mean or how it can also be perceived world wide. If I am a public person, I wouldn't tweet. I'd get my lawyers or pr to do it which ironically defies the purpose of tweets.
 

MK's Winter

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I think it was probably an inside joke that had gone bad. I don't think she did it to be malicious. I think she is naive though. If you go on Phil Hersh's twitter feed he did post an article, which was IMHO not necessary. A bunch of Japanese fans did show her some support. I think the apology delay probably came from embarrassment. I think everyone has had an insert foot in mouth moment. This is Gracie's.
 

ManyCairns

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Glad to know I was not the only one noticing it. And my mothertongue is not even English.

Oh, but the rampant misuse of "then" for "than" is yet more egregious! :biggrin: "It's" and "its" have been misused for far longer, but "than" and "then" used to not get confused at all. When did this happen?? :confused2:
 

Icey

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Nov 28, 2012
Gracie may have fallen on the ice one time too many. In any case, this kind of thing creates an image that will stay with her and put her even more under the microscope.
 

surimi

Onward and forward, Sota!
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I do not understand why playfully poking fun at someone's mispronunciation is a racist act. Are transcriptions of African-American English racist too, then? And what about jokes about the typical Eastern European, French, or Italian pronunciation of English? It's not like it's their fault that they usually struggle with 'th' or 'ae'.
I believe Gracie Gold was just trying to post an entertaining comment to go with the banquet photo. Many people seem to consider foreign accents cute these days. I bet that had Gracie written a similar comment for a photo of a Scottish skater, spelling out their pronunciation, noone would bat an eyelid. She could have written something like 'cheers Mao, fond memories of the NHK' to clarify her intent, but I didn't see anything out of line with her post either way, especially since she cleared the misunderstanding up. It's not like she's an official political representative of her country.
 

AllYouDoIsTalk

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People making other people feel like they should be offended by an inside joke between skaters, even when Mao was okay with it and in on the joke as it was lampooned on internet video. It is this empty paternalism that has really hampered intellectual discourse and real social progression. It is just this kind of quasi-incidence, where an underlying reality differs from the general perception, that offers instant moral superiority for these leeches.

If differences between different groups are simply defined as "discrimination," then it is circular reasoning to say that discrimination causes these differences, and compounded meaningless to quantify these "effects" of discrimination. Peoples are no more the creatures of the objective circumstances around them than the subjective truth of their environments. So no, I don't want to have a dialogue, cause your pretext for it doesn't call for one.
 

KatEll

Rinkside
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In any case, this kind of thing creates an image that will stay with her and put her even more under the microscope.
Fortunately, Gracie does not have many haters. If it had been Chan, he would have been dragged over burning coals regardless of intent.
 

jaylee

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Feb 21, 2010
I'll try to break the argument down:

If you laugh at somebody's inability to pronounce words correctly in your own language (Gold is US American and a Native English speaker), what is implicit in that joke is an expectation that other people should be able master your own language, even though you don't extend the same expectation the other way. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think that Gold can speak Japanese and even if she can say a few words, I highly doubt that she can pronounce them perfectly with a proper Japanese accent. Ergo, what she said was that Japanese people should be able to speak English properly (and if they don't, it's 'funny') even though Native English speakers aren't expected to master Japanese. That's what is offensive.

I agree, and I appreciate you succinctly summarizing the reasons why Gracie's tweet was offensive.

The next question though is what should Gracie's punishment be? It ought to be proportionate to the offense. I think a Phil Hersh article was totally unnecessary for something like this. Did Evan Lysacek's jabs at Johnny Weir (plus his "someone hacked my account" excuse) get this kind of coverage from Phil? (I can't recall.) Gracie apologized, I accept it and won't hold it against her.

I am not willing to give Gracie a pass due to age but rather due to lack of life experience. Maybe she didn't grow up in a diverse community of a lot of Asian-American, native English speakers? I did, and you would never hear this kind of joke there. But not everyone can have that experience. Maybe she hasn't taken a class on the history of colonialism/imperialism yet?

Ten years ago, Lost in Translation made fun of Japanese people in exactly the same way (with the immortal line "Lip my stocking"), and won Sofia Coppola a freaking Oscar. Many, many Asian-Americans were furious and some actually started a campaign against it that was completely ignored by the mainstream media, who fawned over Coppola and her artsy-fartsy movie. Most people in the US didn't just give Sofia a pass for her offensiveness, they gave her acclaim, awards--and never realized why her tiresome jokes were offensive. (Side note: from what I recall, many native Japanese people didn't care one way or another about the movie, while it was Japanese people with more exposure to Western culture who DID care.) When a mainstream movie legitimatizes those kind of jokes, I'm not overly surprised that they continue to pop up.
 

AllYouDoIsTalk

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...And of course, quite telling that it is the non-Asians who is most offended, or rather most "offended" by this. Genuine continuity of cultural receptivity is seldom or as dramatic as these selective, artificial outbursts of moral indignation. You see, the role of these soft-subject leeches in fomenting strife add another level of identity exaggeration, not cultural complementarity.
 

flying camel

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I did not even see the twit to know if it was bad or not. But we all make mistakes in life. The good thing is she was able to apologize to those she offended. She needs to be more aware that since she has become popular a lot of people are following her every move.

I'm willing to forgive and forget and not hold it against her. I hope others can as well. Life is too short.
 

YunaBliss

On the Ice
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May 11, 2010
...And of course, quite telling that it is the non-Asians who is most offended, or rather most "offended" by this. Genuine continuity of cultural receptivity is seldom or as dramatic as these selective, artificial outbursts of moral indignation. You see, the role of these soft-subject leeches in fomenting strife add another level of identity exaggeration, not cultural complementarity.

ROFL. I have no idea what you wrote there. :laugh:

Anyway, I want to give Gracie some benefit of doubt that she did not have any malicious intent and was just trying to relate more to or be friendly with Mao and Japanese fans. However, whatever her intent, I am of the view that it was inappropriate and bad judgment. She needs to quickly mature and grow up (and not just in terms of maturity of her skating) if she really is to become a star. Otherwise, she will run the risk of being perceived as a spoiled, bitchy blonde airhead.
 

AllYouDoIsTalk

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"Racially insensitive"-- what was really meant by this? Was she? and to whom? You see, "perceptions" and "stereotypes" are other words in the prevailing ideological vocabulary that serve the very similar purpose of obscuring behavioral differences among groups. Like discrimination and segregation, unfounded perceptions are an important reality in the history and current experience of some racial and ethnic groups. But again, such a condition cannot be assumed a priori, merely because of an offense was taken. These fringe groups have aroused resentments. The fundamental problem with an ideologically defined vocabulary in discussions of racial or ethnic issue is not that those with such a vocabulary may be right or wrong on this or that issue. The more fundamental problem is that we forfeit our ability to examine such issues empirically, and allow important social questions to be obscured, or THE CONCLUSIONS TO BE PREEMPTED, by mere tendentious words. In other words, obscurantism is dangerous, and clarity is imperative.
 

AllYouDoIsTalk

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I did not even see the twit to know if it was bad or not. But we all make mistakes in life. The good thing is she was able to apologize to those she offended. She needs to be more aware that since she has become popular a lot of people are following her every move.

I'm willing to forgive and forget and not hold it against her. I hope others can as well. Life is too short.

Oh now that you have forgiven her, we can be all rest assured. Thank you for my life being longer.
 

AllYouDoIsTalk

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ROFL. I have no idea what you wrote there. :laugh:

Anyway, I want to give Gracie some benefit of doubt that she did not have any malicious intent and was just trying to relate more to or be friendly with Mao and Japanese fans. However, whatever her intent, I am of the view that it was inappropriate and bad judgment. She needs to quickly mature and grow up (and not just in terms of maturity of her skating) if she really is to become a star. Otherwise, she will run the risk of being perceived as a spoiled, bitchy blonde airhead.

Hey, don't be "a spoiled, bitchy blonde airhead"!!
 
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