Holy cow, offensive Fukudome shirts still for sale
Harry Mok - May 18, 2008
The Cubs tried stopping sales [1] of the shirts after Fukudome came out and said they were offensive. The people selling them, they're making a buck so they don't care much what Fukudome or anyone else says. And apparently some fans are wearing those straw rice paddy hats [2] to games as some sort of homage to the Cubs' first Japanese player.
I can sort of see why some people might not "get" that the shirts or the hats are offensive. If they've never been ridiculed for their skin color or the way they talk, or if they've never been the target of racism, then everyone else is just too sensitive or being PC. These are the most ignorant people and probably nothing will change that.
You can make the case that it's the Midwest and there aren't as many Asian Americans as in California. But that's generalizing and offensive to Midwesterners. There are Cubs fans [3] out there that do get it. Let's hope they are the vast majority.