Thoughts on “Shaquille O’Neal’s 70-30 Joke” 
David Chu

“It’s too bad that something I said in jest was turned into something it’s not. But I didn’t mean anything by it and I’m sorry if I offend anybody.” “It’s amazing how, when you deliver a line, some people laugh, some people don’t,” “You don’t need to write anything about that.”

“If I offended anybody,” O’Neal said, “I apologize.” “I said a joke. It was a 70-30 joke. Seventy percent of people thought it was funny, 30 didn’t.” “It’s probably [someone] just trying to start trouble.l”

People who make racist remarks seldom realize that jokes based on racial biases may be funny to some but that does not make these jokes any less racist/ Or, any less offensive to those on the receiving end of the so-called “jokes.” They often attack the media for pointing out that their remarks were racist.

Does Shaq know that his behavior and subsequent explanations were almost identical to Fuzzy Zoeller’s? The quotes in the first paragraph were made by Zoeller in the aftermath of the infamous Masters “watermelon” incident. Does Shaq not remember how he (and many of us) felt about Zoeller’s “apology”? How ironic it is that the recipient of Zoeller’s racial joke, Tiger Woods — who, in addition to being African-American is after all also Asian-American — is an unintended target of Shaq’s racist “jokes.”


Asian Weekly Article:
http://www.asianweek.com/2003_01_03/sports_yaoming.html