Yo Quiero Taco Bell.... or not?

ESPN suspends Bob Griese for 'taco' joke about Juan Pablo Montoya (video)

ESPN suspended broadcaster Bob Griese for a week after the pro football hall of famer made an on-air, racist joke about NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya at Saturday's Ohio State-Minnesota football game (see video).
During the game, a promotional graphic for NASCAR's Chase for the championship showed the top five drivers, but Montoya wasn't among them. When fellow analyst Chris Spielman asked where was Montoya (who is Colombian), Griese replied:

He's out having a taco."

He apologized for the remark later on the broadcast and again Saturday night during ESPN's prime time broadcast. But it wasn't enough. ESPN issued a public apology calling Griese's remark "inappropriate" and suspended him for a week.
After Montoya drove to a third-place finish Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, reporters asked him about Griese's joke. He replied: 

I don't even know who he is. Somebody mentioned it to me. I don't really care, to tell you the truth. I could say I spent the last three hours eating tacos, but I was actually driving the car."

Griese's joke probably was not meant to be hurtful. It's not as though he pulled a Don Imus, calling African American women basketball players "nappy headed ho's." And he certainly didn't go as far as Frank Caliendo on Fox's NFL show, using a George Bush voice to say Bill Clinton had "dated some dogs" who "used to fight for Mike Vick."
What Griese did was much more subtle -- and is that sense it was more dangerous. He made a thoughtless joke that perpetuates a racial stereotype. It's like saying an African American driver was out eating watermelon. There is a negative history to those specific stereotypes. For far too long they've been used in dehumanizing jokes and cartoons to imply laziness and ignorance. When people are dehumanized in that way, they are seen to be of less value. And when they are of less value, it's easier to marginalize and mistreat them.
The history of those specific sterotypes is so profound that the negative/offensive connotations prevail regardless of the speaker's intent.