Wow... cultural differences?

Today all of my English classes at TJHS, the little school up in the mountains, were working on their posters for the culture festival. The third years were making one entitled, "Let's Travel". Using a worksheet I made, they wrote about a trip they had taken to Okinawa, and then talked about where they want to go next. Two kids said they wanted to go to America. I was printing out pictures off the internet for all of them to use, and one of them asked for a picture of President Obama. I thought that was kind of cool. I was a little less impressed when the teacher asked me to print another one because one of the kids drew a pig face on Obama, but I went ahead and printed another one. I was tempted to ask what the kid would think if I drew a pig face on the Emperor of Japan, but figured that might be taking it a little too far.

Anyhow, the boy who requested the Obama picture pasted it next to his text and wrote on it, "I can do it!". He also added some drawings of his own... the one you see above is Obama as a monkey. In case you can't read it, the caption above it says "Nice monkey".

At first I couldn't help laughing because it was so amazingly horrible. Then I tried to explain to the teacher (in a casual way) that in America, calling an African-American person a monkey was incredibly offensive. I'm not sure if she understood the word "offensive", or if I just didn't make it clear how strongly English speakers would feel about that kind of statement, but she didn't give it a lot of thought. So, on a poster which will be displayed for all of the kids' parents to see, the first African-American President of the United States has been labeled a "nice monkey".

I'm not entirely sure what I should have done about this. I didn't want to make a huge fuss because I'm quite certain the student didn't understand the full implication of what he was writing, but I also am a little upset that this is on a poster to be displayed. I tried to explain it to the teacher, but maybe I wasn't firm enough. Although the parents of the kids probably won't notice or think anything of it, I'm kind of horrified to think that the next ALT might see this poster.

I don't know a lot about racism against black people in Japan. I think there's a lot of ignorance since most of Japan's long history did not include interaction with Africans or people of African descent. That being said, I don't think there is actual hatred behind it. Just a sort of (sometimes tactless) curiosity. ALTs of African descent have a different experience than white or Asian ALTs, especially if they are placed in rural areas. In the inaka (backcountry), it is possible for an ALT to be the first foreigner the people in that town have met. To also be the first black person they had ever seen could result in some strange interactions.

I have to admit, I'm still sort of amused in a horrified way. I really don't know what to make of this. I don't want to overreact, but I also feel like I should be teaching these kids about what is appropriate in my culture. I don't want to single the boy out for drawing it, but he really is getting into dangerous territory. It's kind of how like the kids love to exclaim, "Oh my God!" but don't realize that a lot of people would find that deeply offensive. They just think it's funny. In any case, I don't know what we could do since we can't remake the whole poster. I could ask the teacher if we could cover that drawing up with some paper and have the student add some more appropriate decorations, but I don't know how far I should push this. What do you think?