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Everyone Looks a Little Bit Asian

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Posted on Oct 27, 2010
electsharron.org

By Marcia Alesan Dawkins

Like many other Hispanics, I am a member of Generation E.A. (ethnically ambiguous). Over the years I’ve been mistaken for just about every racial or ethnic combination—from Eurasian to Afro-Irish to Arab-Native American.

This guessing game is something members of Generation E.A. are used to in discussions with acquaintances, classmates, co-workers and curious passersby. Sometimes it’s even educational. But this is never something one would expect to hear from a politician, particularly a politician addressing the Hispanic Student Union at Rancho High School in Las Vegas, Nev. Yet this is exactly what happened when Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, told a group of students that she did not know if the brown border crossers featured in her “Best Friend” commercial were all Hispanic because “some of you look a little more Asian to me.” She continued, “What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I’m evidence of that. I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly.” 

Do these words have a logical meaning? A Las Vegas Sun blogger  tried to find out when he asked what Angle was talking about. Angle’s handlers said that “a reporter thought she looked Asian.” Meaning, if everybody looks a little bit “Asian,” then no one can be a racist. Especially not Sharron Angle, “the first Asian legislator” from Nevada. 

Because this explanation proved unsatisfying, Angle’s spokesman, Jerry Stacy, told The Dailey Caller that Angle is “a proud grandmother of beautiful Hispanic children—she loves them dearly and wants only the best for them, and these are some of the motives that inspire her to run for office.” Does this remind anyone else of George H.W. Bush’s referring to his multiracial Latino grandchildren as “the little brown ones”?

Yet another Angle spokesperson tried to clarify by focusing on diversity: “Sharron is making the point that this country is a melting pot and you cannot judge people based on stereotypes or the way they look. When she was in the legislature, a reporter mistakenly referred to Sharron as being of Asian descent.” Maybe we are being asked to believe that Angle is against racial/ethnic profiling and that she identifies with Hispanic people because she too looks Asian and has been racially profiled as a “model minority” on that basis. Obviously, this makes no sense.

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Since nobody seems to understand what Angle is getting at, we need to remember she is no stranger to controversy. She has been linked to ads telling Hispanics not to vote. She believes that Social Security should be privatized. She has called for the elimination of the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency and denounced the BP compensation fund for victims of the oil spill. She also sees no need for the “unconstitutional” doctrine of separation of church and state. This conveniently supports her suggestion that her candidacy is a mission for God. God, of course, is not to be confused with Allah, who is being praised by all those who Angle says are calling for Shariah law to be practiced by everyone in the U.S.

But the most recent confusing remarks about race and ethnicity are different because they serve a unique purpose. They provide an opportunity to open dialogue in a campaign season that has been more focused on economics than on ethnicity. Could it be that the two are connected?

“The interesting thing about Angle’s version of racial and ethnic talk is that it is more focused on Hispanic issues than on the traditional black-white paradigm,” according to professor Ulli K. Ryder of Brown University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. “What’s happening here is that Hispanics and Asians are being compared and confused because they both equal foreign in the U.S. racial imagination.” So, Angle is saying that these two foreign groups can melt and look alike, but that they will never look like Americans. 

More meaning can be found if we consider Angle’s comments in light of the twist they take on the idea of a “colorblind” society. Angle’s message is that there is no difference between nonwhite races because she can’t see any. This also means that her privileged perspective is the one that counts. That is why she uses multiracial and multiethnic identity to cover racist anxieties about the nation’s increasing diversification while claiming that she can’t possibly be racist. 

What’s more is that all of this precedes what Rachel Maddow has just called the “most overtly racist ad of this campaign.” The “Thanks, Pal” ad features a group of college bound white high school graduates celebrating followed by a photo of three scowling Hispanic men, who are ready “to seize preferred college tuition rates from the students. A banner proclaiming the men ‘illegal aliens’ accompanies the photo.” The ad is so offensive that it earned comparisons to the “Willie Horton” ad and to the “Weekend Passes” and “Revolving Door” ads used to defeat Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign. When confronted with this interpretation Angle struggled to defend the ad.  Sometimes fear mongering and stereotyping are just too hard to ignore.

Perhaps instead of playing racial guessing games and saying that everyone looks a little bit Asian, Angle might follow the advice offered in the song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”  from the Broadway play “Avenue Q.” “If we all could just admit that we are racist a little bit, even though we all know that it’s wrong, maybe it would help us get along.” At the very least, she’d be honest.


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rico, suave's avatar

By rico, suave, October 29, 2010 at 6:06 pm Link to this comment

pastol:

Sort of like liberals. They get lazy because they think the state will take care of their needs, so they don’t need to work too hard. “Everything is in the hands of the” state and the state tells them all about getting by, and add to that the fact that they think they deserve the wealth of others and BAM, national bankruptcy is right around the corner.

Conservatives- working hard so you don’t have to…

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By pastol, October 29, 2010 at 5:54 pm Link to this comment

She is typical of most (I said MOST) Christians. Their brains get lazy because they don’t really need to think about much. Everything is in the hands of “The Lord” and their Bible tells them all about creation. So they get mentally lazy because they know everything and add to that the fact that they think they own everything and BAM, stupid is right around the corner.

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rico, suave's avatar

By rico, suave, October 29, 2010 at 4:46 pm Link to this comment

Handyman:

“This is akin to Jews in Germany campaigning and voting for someone they knew was going to try and exterminate them.”

Sort of like what African-Americans do, insanely, year in, year out, for the Democrats, except that the Dems don’t want to exterminate blacks, just keep them on the welfare plantation.

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By berniem, October 29, 2010 at 10:11 am Link to this comment

Enough of all of these distractions and other electoral BS that will disappear or be immediately forgotten after the “electon” and all returns to BUSINESS AS USUAL!!! The cause of our economic woes lie in the continued corporatization of the government, endless and ubiqutious military involvements(war to you rubes!), tax breaks to people and industries that don’t need them, unfettered privatization and deregulation, and bipartisan corruption at every level and branch of government! Creatures like Angle as well as Reid, among myriad others sure as hell don’t belong in leadership roles and use them for personal gain or actually should be behind bars if laws weren’t so easily changed to legalize crime in the blink of an eye! With the exception of a pityful few does anyone really believe in the integrity and populous concern of the people whose faces and lies are splashed across the media? This nation is on the skids and these parasites are greasing them!

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By Mayfly, October 28, 2010 at 7:57 pm Link to this comment

wrought iron gates—nowadays when “race” or ethnicity is asked on a form it is usually for statistical purposes.

Before the Civil Rights Act—some registrations at hotels or other places asked for “race” information.

Eleanor Roosevelt always wrote, on the line marked race, “human.”

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By Mayfly, October 28, 2010 at 7:52 pm Link to this comment

Inherit the Wind—I was thinking along the same lines—many Latin-Americans have both Spanish and Native-American ancestry. 

My daughter’s ancestry is Korean/Euro-American. She is often mistaken for a Native American.

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By Big B, October 28, 2010 at 7:29 pm Link to this comment

The repugs must be kicking themselves. If they had only nominated a legitimate middle of the road conservative, instead of this ignorant white toast bitch, this race would be over. If she manages to lose this thing to the impotant Harry Reid and the senate stays in dimmo hands, Mike Steele should be burned at the stake.

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By omop, October 28, 2010 at 8:14 am Link to this comment

Now if only she would have said ...“everyone looks a little bit semitic” she
would have been tagged as anti jewish and anti arab.

  So as of the present the TP is supporting a would be WITCH; an almost
convicted ex-military from Brooklyn running for office in North Carolina; an
arrested development “census could have been: in Nevada and; and one calling
for the resignation of US Congressman because of his ...yech religion. All led by
an ex-governor who could see Russia from her bedroom window and believes
she is is realted to grizzly bears.

  It definitely must be global warming at work in the land of the Cherokke and
fellow tribes.

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By wrought iron gates, October 28, 2010 at 4:25 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

We all came from the same mother (earth) and i hate the way we all need to be pigeon holed into a specific catagory. in the UK there is one catagory for white and 12 for black and asian?!?!? why? i just dont understand what relevance that has with anything anyway. were all human.

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By AMERICAN, October 28, 2010 at 4:17 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

So we should ignore the fact that millions of illegal aliens sneak over our borders? I tell you what they look like to me. They look like law breakers who mock our laws and steal our jobs.

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By SteveL, October 28, 2010 at 12:07 am Link to this comment

Tea party beat up any more women today?
This candidate cannot even interview with the milk toast interviewers from corporate media.  What is wrong with this picture?

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By purplewolf, October 27, 2010 at 10:22 pm Link to this comment

ITW: Perhaps with her being a T.P.er and probably a fundie, she believes that the Earth is about 6,000 years old(just like Michelle Bachman)and not a day older. Therefore, narrowing down her “tunnel vision” to a smaller diverse group of people because anything older than 6,000 years did not exist before that. In her mind anyway.

GOP and T.P.er’s, much like the fictional character of Homer Simpson never let the facts or truth get in the way of their way of thinking.

In fact I do believe that the lowly goldfish has a longer memory than these people, especially John McCains, and a goldfishes memory is estimated by credible scientists,to be about 2-3 seconds.

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By TheHandyman, October 27, 2010 at 10:11 pm Link to this comment

The Sharon Angles of this country put their hipocrasy on display when they say that God is not to be confused with Allah when it fits their racist agenda but claim that the word “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance all inclusive. Her ignorance, along with her her racist followers, is no longer even mildly amusing. She has reached a point where she thinks that she can parade her racism as a political positive trait. This is the same kind of behavior that led to the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler in 1930’s Germany. Americans shake their head and cluck their tongues and display bewilderment when the discussion of the rise of Fascism in Italy in Germany and yet when they themselves display the same exact behavior remain blind to the dangers of where they are headed.

But even more bewildering to me is why Harry Reid, who surely is as worthless a politician as has ever existed has not been able to make headway against such an outright crazier than a wombat on fermented pear juice fruitcake. I would love to do an in depth study of why anyone would vote for someone who is so intent on destroying democracy, or what little bit remains, in this country. This is akin to Jews in Germany campaigning and voting for someone they knew was going to try and exterminate them. There has to be something in the water or air of Nevada that causes people to lose their grip on reality or it may be the result of a concerted effort by the right to dummy down the public school system so that after 40 years you have large numbers of people who no longer are capable of rational thought. Whatever the reason, the country that I grew up to believe was headed toward being a positive influence the world. Instead, since my service in Africa in the Peace Corps and in the Army in Vietnam I have seen our country become a terrorist nation bent on meddling in every other country’s affairs. I am pretty sure that it would take a bloody armed Revolution to put this country back on the path our founding Fathers set us on. But I am pretty sure that it is too late and I will die in a country I am totally ashamed of!

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By Zeya, October 27, 2010 at 9:57 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Hmmm… Sharon Angle may look human, but I guarantee you that she’s really a
defective right-wing Republican robot that should be recalled immediately and
returned to the factory for recycling.

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By Inherit The Wind, October 27, 2010 at 9:52 pm Link to this comment

Genetically, Native Americans are far closer to Asians such as Chinese and Japanese than they are to Caucasians, as they are descended from Asians who migrated across Alaska something like 16,000 years ago.  Since the fundamental development of the familiar races seems to have been completed over 20,000 years ago, it’s only natural that many “Hispanics” would look Asian.  Big DUH!!!!

Many “Hispanics” are combination of Native American and Caucasian, in varying combinations. But rather than enjoying the fascination of our diversity, Angle’s stupidly trying to play up the “us/Them” with them as Asians.  The woman is another dangerous idiot.

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By gerard, October 27, 2010 at 9:06 pm Link to this comment

How about emphasizing the fact that we all look more than a little bit human?

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By robert puglia, October 27, 2010 at 8:41 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

i’m not sure that even people who want her deserve her.
lately the political season reminds me of an old police
canard whereby the perp is sent notice of sweepstakes
winnings to be picked up at what turns out to be a bust
for non payment of child support or some such. it’s an
open call for bottom feeders, witness this goon.

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