Vendors outside Wrigley Field and on eBay are still selling shirts that have “Horry Kow” on the front and Japanese ball player Kosuke Fukudome’s name and number on the back. The shirts poke fun at Japanese accents using the familiar “holy cow” that the late Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray used to always use.
The Cubs tried stopping sales 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 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.
This post was originally published on Hyphen magazine’s blog.