Sacramento Kings Remove Free Chinese New Year Shirts Over Racism Concerns

On Monday (Feb 1st), the terrible Sacramento Kings basketball team made a game time decision to remove a part of their lunar new year celebration from their home stadium due to concerns of racism. But perhaps not towards the race you expected.

90 minutes before the game started, the organization removed the free shirts that had been set out to celebrate the upcoming Year of the Monkey. What does this have to do with racism? Well February 1st also happens to be the first day of Black History Month.

The Sacramento Kings canceled a T-shirt giveaway Monday night after some in the organization, including star DeMarcus Cousins, found the shirts to be racially insensitive.

The Kings had placed black shirts adorned with a purple monkey as part of their Lunar New Year celebration on seats at Monday night's game against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Chinese Year of the Monkey begins Feb. 8.

[...]

"I walk into the building and DeMarcus Cousins calls me over to an animated discussion he's having with Kings operations people," he wrote. "He ask me, 'Olskool, what you think about this T Shirt? Told him a little insensitive on 1st day of Black History Month'. They pulled the shirts..."

Staff gathered all the shirts before fans arrived at Sleep Train Arena.

"We all need a lesson in sensitivity," Kings president Chris Granger said, according to the Sacramento Bee. "In an effort to celebrate Chinese New Year, we had some concerns about the T-shirt giveaway, so we pulled them all before the doors opened. Certainly we don't want to offend anybody, and we acted as soon as we heard the concern."

There is a leaguewide initiative this season for teams to commemorate the Chinese New Year, and the rest of the Kings' Lunar New Year celebration continued as scheduled, the Bee reported.

Source

There were other portions of the Chinese New Year celebration that went forward, but I am unsure if any of them mentioned the year of the monkey

This is the shirt:

Thoughts? Good call? Oversensitive?

That's pretty fucking stupid tbh.

you can't win these days

Well, I may be wrong but I think monkeys are generally considered intelligent animals in Chinese folklore.

Take Journey to the West for instance. The protagonist is a monkey.

LOL Cousins is such a pleb. Way too sensitive.

Other than that, the design is dumb and why not just hand it out on the actual day. It's not racist though.

Im a Kings fan and Cousins can be a bit immature.

Only a racist would come to that conclusion.

Its a purple monkey. I've never seen a purple person before. Cousins is a clown.

lol.

It's only racist if someone wants it to be (which is dumb, but happens all the time).

Seems like pretty awkward timing. Don't really see a problem with them wanting to pull it, better to err on the side of caution anyway.

This is really reinforcing my hatred of modern society. Nothing but oversensitive wimps, where are the real people at.

See, I could MAYBE see how it's understandable that people could get mistakenly offended by it. But seeing as how the shirt EXPLICITLY says "Happy lunar new year, year of the monkey", that is crossing the line for me. If it was JUST black+monkey with no extra content added, okay, I get it. But the shirt flat-out says what it's about.

And hell...if this were 1980, I could still understand. "What is the year of the monkey?" "What is a lunar new year?" Who the hell knows...it's freaking 1980 and it's not like people are gonna go to a freaking library just to research this shit. But it's freaking 2016. Everyone has access to damn Google, and most people can instantly look this shit up on their damn phones that they keep in their pockets all the time.

And seriously man, I'm trying to be fair here. I understand that no one is able to know everything. I understand how it's entirely possible for someone to not be aware of this, and to mistakenly get offended if it was ONLY "black plus monkey plus black history month". But for crying out loud, the damn shirt specifically says what it's about, thereby giving everyone a very easy excuse to just plain Google the shit. At some point I think we need to take a stand against deliberate ignorance and intentional laziness. We've reached an age where so goddamn much information is at our fingertips, so can we PLEASE make more of an effort to not go into an outrage until we actually take a few goddamn seconds to actually look up what we're so outraged about?

Eh, someone would likely find a way to get offended regardless of what was done or displayed on the T-shirt.

Hahaha...bunch of clowns. Can't even explicitly celebrate other cultures without considering all sorts of wacky possibilities of somehow offending black people.

Can't say animals or you're racist.

Can't mention races or you're racist.

Good Lord.

i'm offended by plain white t-shirts all the time

why does it have to be white?

Jesus fucking christ this is so stupid...

Is this just another black man that gets off from special treatment?

@cmdr_danbo: Shut up.

Anyway this thing is stupid. Monkey is an offensive racial slur for black people? So the way to combat that is to remove the monkey t-shirts that have nothing to do with it and give the slur even more power in the process? Quite intelligent really.

Even more hilarious when you consider the fact that black history month is racist in and on itself.

@Juub1990: so I'm right. Thought so.

Who is DeMarcus Cousins and why should I care what offends him?

I ask that the Sacramento Kings remove their offensive name from America, we have no Kings in this country, i am highly offended.

#BlackT-shirtsmatter

@Solaryellow: lmao

You could have Googled and found out in the time it took you to post that. He's a prominent player on the Kings.

I'm half black and this whole thing made me chuckle.

-Byshop

I think people crying racist just wanna play victim.

Cuz **** the Chinese, right? Let them celebrate their new year somewhere else!

Christ, I'm sick of everyone calling everything racist. Learn to context.

No need to go that route when someone (you) was bound to answer. Win Win. Thanks.

What an embarrassment to Sacramento.

Over sensitive...that's just plain dumb.

The shirt explicitly says what it is about, the celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and that year happens to be the year of the monkey. There's nothing wrong with it. Context matters a lot. If someone takes that out of context and thinks it to be racist, that says more about the person than the shirt itself. Context is about as common as Common Sense, in that people rarely use it in today's society. >_>

Nope, that just means you're not a true brotha! :P

On-topic: Very stupid indeed! Kirk Cousins is a great athlete, but his ego is too huge!

Sounds like the only racists here are those getting offended by this.

Kind of stupid to give the shirts 1 week before the year change, but more stupid is the reason for removing them.

Feb. 8 is on Monday, isn't there any game then to give the shirts?

Not a home game for the Kings

Then the other team.

The article says everyone will be doing this, so why did The Kings need to start of the Year with the wrong foot, and in their mouth.

@Ant_17: because they probably didn't think it would be a problem when they planned it

That is freaking stupid.

We should be a society where you can celebrate the year of the monkey, and black history month. The only thing that is offensive about this is making a correlation between the two things. Obviously some idiots will snicker, but they're a lost cause so **** 'em, wear the shirts.

This is the worst kind of sensitivity, because it caters to both the hypersensitive, and the bigoted; it assumes people are not mature enough to overlook it, or people will use it for hate. Both are weak-minded regressives.

Frankly I am offended they did this.

They should have stuck with their first thought, it is generally the right one, anyway, and in this case definitely was.

This truly is a "only in America" moment.

When you live in a society where the right not to be offended seems to be pushed around, something of this nature is to be expected. Couple that with a politically correct society and the tomfoolery never stops. Something is radically wrong when an individual is offended over a purple monkey.

I'd enjoy hearing from the shot caller as they explain what is offensive about such a shirt.

The way I read that wasn't that he thought the shirt was racist, rather that Chinese culture was being celebrated on the 1st day of black history month, which apparently offends Cousins.