re: #53 Charles

New outrageous outrage alert.

Right wing bloggers really love it when they find a Democrat who says something they can construe as racist, and here’s the latest example: Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat who says (in Spanish): “the Vietnamese and the Republicans are trying to take away this seat.”

[Video]

Background info: [Link: blogs.ocweekly.com…]

Wingnuts are all pointing fingers and gloating over this. But is it really an example of racism?

This reminded me of an episode of This American Life, 381 “Turncoat”. They talked about how the San Jose City Councilwoman Madison Nguyen pissed off a LOT of the Vietnamese Community because she named an area “Saigon Business District” instead of “Little Saigon”. There were huge protests, some as large as 2500 and with many people coming as far as Orange County. They labelled her “pro-communist” and vilified her.

The episode also mentions that there was a lot of “red-baiting” in the Vietnamese community. I thought this was a particularly good quote:

… I think it’s a surprise for many people who are unfamiliar with the Vietnamese American community, how much of this name calling and suspicion still resonates. I think some people think it looks like it’s right out of the McCarthy Era when they view the Vietnamese american community.

There are tons of examples of this kind of red baiting.. the first Vietnamese superintendent of schools in the Westminster school district in Orange County was removed a week after she was appointed because an activist lobbied school board members, saying she was a communist.”

Sanchez is a congresswoman for 47th congressional district in Orange County that includes Garden Grove, and according to Wikipedia..

The large Vietnamese-American communities in Garden Grove and Westminster are predominantly Republican; Vietnamese Americans registered Republicans outnumber those registered as Democrats by 55% to 22%.