Why?: Spanish Race Fan (Heh?) Dresses In Blackface To Mock Lewis Hamilton. Again.

British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton was openly mocked by Spanish racing fans for the second year in a row. Last year, Hamilton was met with a group of fans in blackface and gray (why?) wigs wearing “Hamilton Family” t-shirts at a pre-season testing session in Barcelona.

This time around, a fan attending the Circuit de Catalunya showed up in blackface in order to berate Hamilton. 

The Hamilton Family of Barcelona, Spain barely survived the fire, which left only their ability to annoy and comment on blogs intact.

Such flagrant and unabashed displays of racism make us wonder: Aren’t these Spanish fans embarrassed? Do they live in some sort of insular community where people who aren’t “White” (a term which might not be thought to include Spaniards in other parts of the world) don’t exist or are categorically thought to be subhuman? It seems we’ve had so many instances of Spanish people very openly and proudly mocking foreigners - At the race, to their face! At the big game, or on the train! - that we have to wonder why this might be. Our guess? Many Spaniards feel that foreigners who move into their country, many from South America and Africa, take away the jobs they don’t want, or mess up their very precise and exacting train schedules, or utterly ruin the concept of siesta by working between the hours of, oh, 2 pm to 6 pm. So anyone that comes from someplace else or looks different is unwanted, and that lack of want is best expressed when hurled at someone who won’t deserve to be hurt or offended by your taunts because they are less than human. 

Jealous?

But that’s just our guess! What do we know - we enjoy wildly stabbing in the dark, occasionally hitting someone who is itching to give us a lesson is history and etymology. Double whammy of knowledge! Thank you!

Anyway: We’ll open this discussion up to all of you. Why is this dude in blackface, and smiling at the camera while doing so?

Spanish Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton suffers more racist abuse (Picture) [Mirror]