On March 9th, 2013, USA Today published an article on their website about a local Vermont newspaper that made a "racist" joke in one of their issues. The town in which the newspaper is published is home to a high school which was soon to face off against a certain Rice High School in a basketball game, and so it ran a page with the words "FRY RICE!" in huge, Asian-looking font.
The paper claims it meant nothing bad by the page; that the slogan was meant to be a silly pun on the rival school's name intended to promote school spirit and excitement for the game, and that they had no intentions of being offensive or racist in any way. However, the Asian American Journalists Association was not pleased. While they understood that the paper had no ill intentions, they did think that the headline showed a "lapse of judgement and poor taste."
While the article in question was criticized for its poor taste in dealing with things related to Asian culture, there are many things in contemporary American society that are done in poor taste with respect to Middle Eastern culture. For example, as I have mentioned in a previous blog post, Jeff Dunham's comedy ventriloquist act "Achmed the Dead Terrorist" is not something I believe to be blatantly malicious or racist against Middle Easterners and Muslims, but it is very culturally insensitive. In creating something that people can laugh at, Dunham has forgotten to take into account the stigmas his act is perpetuating (and because of the stigma that all Muslim people are terrorist or support terrorist activities, perhaps his lapse of judgment is at this time in America's history a more dangerous lapse than that of the editors of the Vermont newspaper.) In any case, I believe that Americans need desperately to be more sensitive about respecting the cultures of others. Just because something may not be offensive to one person, it may be to another.
Source: USA Today. (See Article Here)
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