Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/28/incumbent-gop-senator-mark-kir.html
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He is a shitbag, but I am not sure he was being racist (just shitty and stupid).
Sidebar: Duckworth is a BAMF. So happy my home state has her running for office.
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Yes, it actually is. Because just because she has Asian heritage doesn’t negate the fact she has family going back to colonial times. The underlying racist assumption is that because she’s Asian, she’s not a real American, somehow.
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Damn her parents are old.
Seriously though, where’s the racial slur? I don’t even see the racism. He assumed she was from Thailand, he was mistaken correct.
See above.
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Insulting a wounded warrior. How fucking stupid can you get? I know he doesn’t have much experience taking the high road, but there are times when that’s the only way to go.
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I see how you could take it that way, but I read it more as “He doesn’t know one of her parents was a US citizen”.
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Kirk should have been VERY aware of her history as a DAR from a family that has served in nearly every War these United States have fought. He’s running against her and she hasn’t kept it a secret.
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Which would not have happened if she was white.
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That assumption is the racist part.
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Ninjaed, never mind.
I still don’t think it’s racist. I also assumed that Tammy Duckworth was born in Thailand, because she was born in Thailand. I didn’t know her father was American.
Racist would be assuming a random Asian person on the street is foreign, even though that person could easily be born in the US
I think he’s questioning her identity as a DAR, as @jlw suggests.
Just because you don’t see it as racist, doesn’t mean it isn’t. The “POC not being real Americans” has a long history and often isn’t used with explict racism. Discourses about who does and doesn’t belong in America has long been a more polite form of racism.
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my wife’s mixed Chinese, and she’d be so hurt by this story I’m not even going to tell her about it. Mixed people get a special kind of racism just for them that 's fucking shitty and often comes from both sides.
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And assuming that a known person is Asian because they had asian features. and then assuming that person is not a “real” American.
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You loose legs for your country, you get a pass.
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From racism?
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It turns out he was right. She was from Thailand after all.
Even if Mark Kirk was previously unaware of that fact, he should have been clued in by her statement “My family has served this nation in uniform, going back to the Revolution. I’m a daughter of the American Revolution.”
His response wasn’t “oh, I didn’t know that.” It was to flippantly suggest that she was lying, because how could she possibly have ancestors who fought for George Washington? He didn’t pause to reevaluate his assumptions about her ancestry because she looks Asian. That’s where the racism comes in.
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FTFY 
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I tip my tricorn to Mr Kirk for his service in the Continental Army.
( Edited because history, it’s a thing)
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