Memes

Yes I've seen it used that way commonly. I'm seeing it used that way commonly right now. The "joke" originates from a picture of Xi Jinping and Barack Obama in which the Asian man is compared to a yellow bear, and the black man is compared to an African cat named "Tigger". If you saw people calling Obama "Tigger" (or "a tigger", so be a bit less subtle about it) as an epithet, I seriously doubt you'd be willing to accept claims of ignorance, or that "catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go" is just a harmless phrase that people say because it "upsets" him in a totally race neutral way.

I'm glad you mentioned the Trump hands thing too, because while there's not an analogous racial component, you make the joke for the same reason: it's not to "upset Trump", who absolutely doesn't know you exist and is totally unaffected by anything you personally say or do. You do it to identify yourself to other American liberals as a consumer of John Oliver or Stephen Colbert's TV shows. I think it's petty and stupid to substitute fandom for politics, but at the end of the day, correcting you on that isn't terribly important to me. Trump is a white American whose deliberate actions have made life materially worse for most people I personally know, and who has no shortage of public statements that are repugnant on their face. The entire US political and economic system exists to protect him and people like him.

Why do I give a shit what petty superficial shit you say about Xi then? I promise it's not for his benefit. I don't know the guy, and crucially, I don't think you do either. I believe that you hate him, but I don't believe it's for anything specific that he personally said or did. I'm no expert, but by all accounts he seems to be a pretty boring guy that says pretty normal generic shit about development, stability, and cooperation. I'm willing to bet you don't speak Chinese, or have some terribly deep personal connection to China, so I'm also willing to bet he only exists for you as a vague symbol of "badness" constructed through your consumption of English language capitalist media. Media produced by Euro-American companies with a direct financial stake in manufacturing consent for a war against China. I think if Xi were replaced tomorrow with a literal mannequin, you'd still believe you had good reasons for hating that mannequin. The reason I wasted my time typing all this isn't because I believe Xi needs to be protected from you (maliciously or not) making racist jokes on the internet. It's because I would really prefer it if English speaking people that probably believe themselves to be kind and good and caring didn't invest their time and effort and energy into dehumanizing and othering one of the most populous nations on earth toward the end of justifying a nuclear war that will probably end human life on earth. There are simply less destructive ways to get your lulz online.