Sotomayor As An… Asian??

Check out this nonsense from the cover of the National Review’s latest issue:

nationalreview_thewiselatina

Wtf?!

-fs

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 5:54 pm and is filed under In The News, Politics, Racism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Sotomayor As An… Asian??”

  1. theengagementfactor Says:
    June 8, 2009 at 6:04 pm | Reply

    That is a pretty tasteless cover.

    http://theengagementfactor.wordpress.com/

  2. Daniel Kim Says:
    July 16, 2009 at 5:28 pm | Reply

    A letter I sent to the National Review is copied and pasted here:

    Dear Sir or Madam:

    I am a veteran of ten years’ proud service as a US Army infantryman, and have literally shed blood for the country in which I was born and raised. This is the country that my parents and my wife’s parents immigrated to because of her promise of a better life than that available to them in South Korea. It was and still is the greatest privilege of my life to have served this great nation.

    However incisive and reasoned the articles in the 22 June issue were, however, I felt compelled to convey the initial dismay, then revulsion, I felt when I saw the cover illustration of a slant-eyed Judge Sotomayor in a Buddha pose. At best, this illustration is a caricature of Asians that shows poor taste; at worst, it is outright racist. I saw this cover illustration as a tacit wink and nod from the National Review to those in the conservative community who will probably never see Asian Americans as their equals in any sense of the word. Whatever one’s opinion of the Judge’s politics or background, no one deserves to be caricatured in this way.

    I grew up dealing with or fighting other boys who thought less of me simply because of my heritage, and those who felt it was fun to throw a slur or snide comment. On occasion, this took the form of people pulling their eyes to the side to make slant-eye faces at me. To my surprise and great disappointment, I received similar, albeit immaculately mannered, treatment from fellow conservatives when my father and I volunteered to help elect President G.H.W. Bush in 1988. I found my first true home in the military’s meritocracy where thankfully, one’s abilities far outweighed anyone’s snap judgment of me based on my ethnicity. It is my dream that my son, the third generation of my family in this country, will not suffer the discrimination my wife or I did, and that he will be able to cherish his ethnicity without fear of attack from those who would hate his appearance, not his character.

    Your cover illustration cannot but foster both the latent xenophobia and homophobia of “anyone who isn’t like us” in today’s conservative community. That quote is from a man I met in a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall last year, wearing a McCain-Palin button, making a pitch for our support. He saw me, the only minority in the group, and apologized, but I felt it was indicative of the great leap backwards we would have taken, with respect to tolerance and respect for different cultures and beliefs, had we voted Republicans into power last year.

    I used to read your magazine occasionally because I grew up watching Mr. Buckley on television with my father, and until the 1992 election thought of myself as an economic (but not social) conservative, in the mold of Senator Rockefeller or Governor Kean. I cannot in good conscience read the National Review any longer. I wish your publication the best, but it will never again have my readership.

    Respectfully,

    Daniel Kim
    former Staff Sergeant, US Army

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