Turkish Anchor Reports on Obama in Blackface, Spoof or Real News?

Very well put, Fred. That is one of the cultures and languages I'm very knowledgeable about, in fact I'm a professional translator and interpreter of Turkish. What the anchor is saying that the U.S. has always been asking from the Turks and not giving back, and he's referring primarily to U.S.'s indifference to terrorist attacks from Northern Iraq. There's a saying in Turkish that you get half a black face when you ask, but you get two black faces if you refuse to give. It's a half serious and half humourous broadcast that concludes with an advice to "Hussein" Obama not to do what Bill Clinton was doing in the Oval Office.

There's a high degree of racial tolerance in Turkey, and many Black Africans, like soccer players, have married Turkish women, learned the language, and happily settled there, some of them obtaining Turkish citizenship. I think Obama has captured hearts there, and Turks only show humour to people they feel close to. I still think it's an irreverent, ethnically insensitive and highly disrespectful thing to do by ignorant journalists, but then that's not uncommon in North American media, and the piece was obviously intended for a local audience.

Your post is rife with contradictions. How is Turkish blackface a display of hope AND symbolic of the "black years" of the Bush Administration? You're using "black years" in a negative sense, so how can it also be a "display of hope"?

You offer no evidence that blackface means something different in Turkish culture than it does in the West. Here we know that blackface is racist and we call it what it is.

You offer tanned Japanese Ganguro girls as an example but Japan is not Turkey and tanned skin is not blackface. If you want to talk about Japanese blackface, which is equally offensive, then  say so.

What this reporter did was culturally insensitive at best and outright racist at worse. If it's true that he meant to show respect to our President, he should have informed himself about our culture in the same way American officials are informed about cultural issues before they travel so they don't insult the people they mean to reach out to.

This is not racist unless you choose to view it that way. The demeanor of the reporter suggests he is not trying to be funny but simply presenting the report, straight-faced to the world. It may seem outrageous to some Americans and others attuned to the American consciousness, but I get the impression that this was a media ploy to garner ratings. However, there is always the hope that this was a show of solidarity, to say that Turkey backs Obama and stands toe-to-toe with him to the point that his shame is their shame. Should he be prosecuted like the Iraqi reporter who threw a shoe at Bush ?

Until we know the language, customs and mindset of a people, we know nothing. As a dark-skinned Indian schoolboy, I was often teased by some of my schoolmates who were raised according to the Brahmin/Caste ideology where only people with fair skin were considered to be 'clean'. That made something of an 'Untouchable' in their eyes. 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/feature1/

It is often a relief to be able to live and work in America. Tolerance comes easy to me now.

It wouldn't be tolerated if a reporter in your/my region of the world or within our culture did it covering a story in that region or culture.  Seems to me you are ignoring that there are light years in distance between the west and Turkey in all aspects of life. Asking that they respect our culture and what may be offensive to us also demands we be not so thin skinned to their culture. You ask how this could be tolerated in 2009 but surely this is of the mindset of getting off a bus and setting foot on a street in your city in 2009. Do the same in an average city in Turkey and you might as well be on another planet, and it's not just the language.

I think as long as we remain so thin skinned about race and react to everything with outrage and shock, we actually aren't going to move forward. We should accept that some level of racism is actually a normal human trait and fault, get over that as long as it doesn't reach oppression or hate, and appreciate what's common and accept what's different. We all like to be around what is familiar to us and what looks like us and likes what we like. Maybe we should also appreciate a little racism while we can. They say in a thousand years all of humanity will be the same shade of light brown...

(good time to dump stock in those tanning bed companies?)