SubX.News® Commentary
When a South Korean influencer turned her camera on herself to celebrate her team’s World Cup victory in Mexico, the last thing she expected to capture was the man behind her pulling his fingers at the corners of his eyes, mocking her face.
It lasted only a moment. But that moment cost him his job and exposed something larger than one man’s bad joke.
The man has been identified as Ulysses Fernando Bernal Miramontes, president of the College of Civic, Topographic, and Geometric Engineering Professionals of Jalisco State.
During the June 12, 2026 match at Estadio Guadalajara in Zapopan, Mexico, he looked directly into the lens of South Korean streamer and beauty influencer Yoon Su-jin (이노냥), known online as Ino Cat, and deliberately pulled his eyes into a “slanted” shape to mock East Asian features.
The clip went viral.
Within hours, his own professional association’s Honor and Justice Committee convened an emergency meeting and voted to strip him of his title and remove him from office.
Bernal later issued a bilingual apology in English and Spanish, saying he wanted foreigners visiting Mexico to feel at home and had instead done “the exact opposite.”
He submitted his resignation to limit damage to the organization and take personal responsibility.
As an Asian woman who has lived in the United States for three decades, I can tell you: this was not a harmless joke.
It was racism.
And the problem is not only what he did, but how many people rushed to excuse it.
“Is It Racist?” You Already Know
When my husband, John, asked me whether I thought the gesture was racist, he kept pushing for a clear answer.
“Is it racist or not?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s racist.”
For me, it was simple. You mock a person’s genetic features, their eyes, their face, the things they cannot change, and you’re not making a clever joke.
You’re telling them they are less.
This kind of humor doesn’t stay harmless. It normalizes making fun of things people are born with.
This wasn’t just about “sensitivity” or “hurt feelings.”
It was about a grown man, the head of a professional institution, deciding that another human being’s face existed for his entertainment.
The Excuses Are Worse Than the Act
What bothers me most is not only his action. It’s the chorus that followed:
“Relax, it’s just a joke.”
“We’re just having fun.”
“People are too sensitive.”
Often, the loudest defenders are not the ones being mocked.
They do not share the target’s face or experience, but they are quick to decide what should and should not hurt.
There is a clear pattern. When it is their own community on the line, many people call things racism immediately. When it is Asians, it suddenly becomes “no big deal.”
That double standard is what angers me most.
It is not the first time someone has pulled their eyes at me or someone who looks like me.
We are used to that.
What cuts deeper is the message that our hurt does not count and that anyone who objects is “too sensitive.”
Why Many Asians Stay Quiet
One reason people think it’s not a big deal is because many Asians do not fight back publicly.
In America, we often learn to survive by staying quiet.
We are business owners, professionals, and workers.
We keep our heads down, believing complaining won’t change anything.
Our success in top universities, hospitals, research labs, and businesses becomes another excuse:
“They’re doing fine, so it can’t really be racism.”
“They’re smart; they can take a joke.”
We become the safe target.
Slant-eye jokes, kung fu noises, “ching chong” sounds, or calling any East Asian “Chinese” persist because, in the public imagination, we stay quiet and succeed anyway.
That doesn’t mean there is no injury.
It means we are used to carrying it alone.
Host Country, Guest Target
There is another layer here: hospitality.
Yoon Su-jin was a visitor in Mexico, streaming from a global event.
Her team had just won.
She was happy, smiling, sharing that joy with millions.
Behind her, a man from the host country turned her celebration into his joke.
A host country welcoming the world for the World Cup has a basic responsibility to show decency.
You do not humiliate guests in front of the world and then shrug it off.
This Is About Character
Some argue the punishment was too harsh.
Why remove a man from his position over a few seconds of stupidity?
I understand that concern.
But when you hold a leadership title like president of a professional college, you represent more than yourself.
Leadership positions require judgment.
When someone publicly mocks a visitor on a global stage, people are entitled to question whether that person should continue representing a professional institution.
You Don’t Understand It Until It’s Done to You
My husband is white. For years, I tried to explain to him how racism feels in everyday life.
Once, more than twenty years ago, we were in Kentucky. We went into a restaurant.
I could feel people staring at me.
No words, just looks.
In the car afterward, I told him: “Didn’t you notice?”
He hadn’t. To him, it was just another meal.
Years later, in Koreatown in Los Angeles, he finally felt it from the other side.
We walked into a restaurant that was nowhere near full.
The hostess made us wait, then tried to seat us all the way in the back, in a separate room by the bathroom, where only one other non‑Asian man had been placed.
He stopped, looked around, and said, “Why are we sitting here?”
We left.
In the car, I asked him, “Do you see now?”
He did.
Until it happens to you, racism can sound like a theory or someone else’s complaint.
You may think people are “too sensitive” or “always playing the race card.”
Once you are the one being quietly pushed to the back, or mocked to your face, it no longer feels like a joke.
Common Racism
In the end, what happened in that stadium in Mexico isn’t rare or complicated.
It’s the everyday racism that hides behind “just joking,” the kind that shrugs off other people’s pain because it has never felt it.
The question is not whether this was racist.
The question is how much longer we’re willing to pretend that this kind of casual racism is harmless.
Racism does not stop being racism simply because someone laughs while doing it.
[ Emi Yamamoto is the Co-Editor of http://SubX.News and an accomplished photojournalist. A Japanese immigrant who has lived in the United States for more than 30 years, she has been married to her co-editor, John Kugler, for 27 years and is the proud mother of four grown sons.]
