The World Archery Federation had labeled by netizens as a racist after the organisation had allegedly use a font associated with Asian racism in a tweet to congratulate the South Korea’s Olympic archers for making it to the top 3 qualifiers.
On Tuesday (27 July), the organisation shared the video on their Twitter page, introducing the South Korean women’s team, who are competing in individual rounds, using the “chop suey” font for their names.
The font was also called “wonton” font and the font imitates the brush strokes of Chinese calligraphy in writing alphabets. The font was commonly being used by Asian restaurants in the past.
Korean women have won eight of the last nine @Olympics golds. With three top qualifiers, they’re poised to add another. 🥇
— World Archery (@worldarchery) July 26, 2021
The individual competitions at @Tokyo2020 start today.#ArcheryatTokyo #archery pic.twitter.com/ZZoqyBZ5ls
These days, the font is being associated with an expression of racist stereotypes and bias towards Asians. Americans had been using the font in racist leaflets and posters to express their racist opinion towards the Chinese Americans.
Meanwhile, the World Archery Federation’s spokesperson had clarified that the use of the font was intended to promote the archers from South Korea, who dominated the Olympic archery competition.
The archers from South Korea have won 3 gold medals in all archery team events at Tokyo and they will be competing at individual competitions.
Meanwhile, Chris Wells says the World Archery Federation had used the font to match the style of the Tokyo 2020 logo of a Japanese enso, a hand-drawn circle in a single stroke to describe the archery target.
However, netizens were not convinced by his response and they continued to criticize the organisation for choosing such a font.
Too bad about the #racist font, otherwise super glad to see the respect given to the amazing Korean women’s archery team.
— CedarBough Saeji (@TheKpopProf) July 28, 2021
You know what’s missed the mark?
— Kevin Harlow 🇨🇦 (@klharlow) July 28, 2021
That font. Do better.
Worlds most racist font.
— Identify as Cargo Pants. (@602Erik) July 28, 2021
The font pic.twitter.com/mC4CiBfZMy
— Dorsey Mc- Get Vaccinated Enjoy Summer 🌞🌞💉💉😷 (@Baby50s) July 28, 2021
The similar incident happened back in 2002, where the U.S. clothing Abercrombie & Fitch had to recall a line of T-shirts after they receive a tremendous backlash from netizens for using the same font in designs portraying Asians.
