3.18.2013

Turkish Group From Austria Claims That Star Wars Legos Are Racist

This Lego city has a Stop & Frisk program.
According to "The Telegraph", The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria has claimed that a Lego Star Wars set featuring Jabba the Hutt's palace "Depicts Asians and Orientals as people with deceitful and criminal personalities." The interesting thing about this is not whether or not the Legos are actually racist, but that this Turkish group in Austria is taking offense to racism against "Orientals". Even if these Legos were the most racist caricature of Asians and Orientals anyone's ever seen, why would the Turkish Cultural Community of Austria be getting involved and demanding a public apology from Lego?

Technically Turkey is a "Eurasian" country so it's sort of Asian, it isn't really "Oriental" though. You never see someone you think might be Japanese and it turns out they're from Istanbul. Plus, if this group is going to be offended by racism towards Asians it might want to figure out that Asians don't like being called "Orientals". This story is basically like if a group in Germany called IKEA out on "Negative depictions of Chinamen". If these Legos were offensive to Asians you'd think one of those groups with actual Asians in it would have brought attention to this earlier. The fact they haven't proves it's not a valid complaint. What's the point in being offended by Legos anyhow? Are they afraid it's going to influence children? Who takes racial cues from Legos? You never meet a racist ass adult and come to find that he learned all his hatreds from playing with Danish construction bricks. Overly sensitive reactions like this only result in more racism because they ignore the real hatred out there and give people even more reasons to think political correctness is a joke.

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