Toby Keith pulled a Miley Cyrus during an impromptu concert in which Will Smith sang Rapper’s Delight. While Will rapped, “to the black, to the white, the red and the brown, the purple and yellow,” Toby made the slant-eye gesture to emphasize that Will meant Asian people when he said “yellow”, not a lemon or anything like that. Toby was just trying to clear things up. Turns out people took offense to Toby being so helpful. Especially since he was in Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize Concert.
Now reps for Asian American groups are calling Toby out. The Asian American Justice Center said, “Toby Keith embarrassed himself and his country, denigrated the Noble Peace Prize and offended Asians and Asian Americans by using a crude, racist hand gesture.” While the Media Action Network for Asians said, “By doing this, he is telling his Asian fans ‘you don’t matter, you’re not on my radar.’”
Reps for Keith responded, “nobody at the party thought Toby was out of line.” But instead of “line” they probably said “rine” and then pointed to someone who looked Asian and laughed.
If Toby was so big into hand gestures, I wonder why when Will said “brown”, Toby didn’t yell, “For Allah!” or when he said “red”, he didn’t do the tomahawk chop and put five fingers behind his head to signify feathers or when Will said “black,” Toby didn’t smash his lips together so they’d look real big and swollen. Wait, I think I know the answer to the last one. It might have been because he would have gotten his ass kicked by the people behind him.
