Sports Slurs: When Words Go Foul

Shaquille O'Neal uses made-up Chinese words and Kung Fu-style gestures to taunt fellow NBA player Yao Ming.

A Serbian player for the Sacramento Kings uses a three-fingered hand gesture that some Muslims compare to a Nazi salute.

And a Major League Baseball umpire leaves a recorded phone message using the words "stupid Jew bitch."

O'Neal apologized, though not in a way that satisfied everyone. The Kings player says his hand gesture is not intended to be offensive, though some remain very offended. And the MLB umpire was suspended for 10 games, a move lauded by the Anti-Defamation League as "swift and appropriate."

The latest rash of slurs from the sports world isn't all that surprising. Slurs have been spewed by John Rocker and Reggie White in the recent past, Marge Schott in the not so recent past, and Jimmy the Greek and Al Campanis in the more distant past.

While it's not a new trend, observers do say it is a growing one.

"It's definitely changed in the past 20 years," said Charles A. Maher, the psychologist for Cleveland's major league baseball team and a psychology professor at Rutgers University.

Changed how? "Getting worse," Maher said.

Based on the growing diversity in professional sports, with athletes coming to the United States from all over the world, increasing tension and missteps don't necessarily surprise Susan Leitao, director of Project Teamwork at the Northeastern University Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

"We see a growing number of people from all different countries," she said. "We usually tend not to embrace new ways. Different and strange usually ends up being negative at first."

Damage done, apologies made

What happens when a sports slur draws media attention?

"For the general public, it reinforces the image of athletes as egotistical, selfish and out of control," Maher said.

It also sometimes brings a backlash, to individual athletes, teams and leagues. Sometimes that backlash is big, as with the Asian community's ongoing complaints about Shaq, which has included letter-writing and e-mail campaigns and has involved sports and news columnists, elected officials and others.

Other times, the offended group is smaller, less vocal or less organized, and the matter doesn't rise as high in the public eye. Isa Blumi, a graduate student at New York University, is a Muslim Kosovar Albanian, a U.S. citizen and, in Blumi's own words, "extremely upset" by Divac and teammate Peja Stojakovic exchanging the three-fingered salute. Blumi has written to the Kings, the NBA league and Sacramento-area media outlets, without satisfaction.

The history of the three-fingered salute is complex, tied in part to the trinity of the Serbian Orthodox church. But some say it has moved beyond religion to become a nationalistic, anti-Muslim salute. Casual viewers might see the symbol as a celebration of a three-point shot; Blumi and other Muslims, though, see it as a gesture of hate.

The Sacramento News and Review, an alternative weekly, published a story about Divac's salute. In it, the newspaper quoted a 21-year-old Muslim woman who fled Bosnia as a child. When she saw a professional basketball player making the same salute that had terrorized her as a child, "It's like somebody kicked me in the stomach," she told the newspaper.

Divac's response? "I know the soldiers did it, but that's not what it means to me," he told the newspaper.

That's just not good enough for Blumi, who, in an e-mail interview said, "Divac knows perfectly well what he is doing."

Clearly, among some, the salute carries the weight of hate. Consider online commentary about the News and Review story in which a Serbian writer stated, "It fills me with great pride that the Orthodox sign of the Cross fills the hearts of Muslims and Croats with fear just like a cross frightens vampires."