By now, virtually everyone--or at least virtually everyone on DailyKos--is familiar with the Super Bowl advertisement that Pete Hoekstra thought would be a smashing start to his Senate campaign in Michigan. It wasn't.
While others have rightfully mocked, and will continue to mock, the thinly-veiled racism present in Hoekstra's advertisement, I would like to use this opportunity to advance another argument: Hoekstra's television advertisement simply represents yet another instance in which the Republican Party has pushed for regression, rather than progression.
The fact remains that racial and cultural stereotypes have been perpetuated throughout the duration of our country's history. This is most plainly seen with regard to the treatment of African-American--"blackface" was commonplace and popular nearly a century ago.
Indeed, even outside of the confines of "different" races and "different" colored skins, racism and racial prejudice and ignorance ran rampant in American societyâeven against people with Germanic backgrounds. During World War I, many individuals of German descentâor even those who LOOKED German, like those from Switzerland, Poland, Norway, Sweden, and yes, even from Mr. Hoekstra's home country of the Netherlandsâwere discriminated against, if not directly attacked and assaulted for what they simply looked like. German immigration to the United States grinded to a halt, and "sauerkraut" was renamed "liberty cabbage." German measles was even renamed "liberty measles," though one cannot help but comment that if the goal at the time was hatred against Germans, the adjective "German" should be placed in front of a nasty disease.
World War II remains one of the starkest examples of government-mandated racism. Just several decades after Madison Grant published "The Passing of the Great Race" in 1918, in which he promoted the "scientific" racial superiority of members of the Nordic race (like Pete Hoekstra), the American government and private entertainment companies frequently pushed aggressively inaccurate portrayals of Italians, Japanese, and Germans. Examples of this treatment towards the Japanese are those most readily available, mainly due to the more obviously-seen physical differences between white American citizens and Japanese citizensâor to put it in the perspective of the time, Roosevelt and Hirohito.
Contrary to the popular contemporary wisdom, internment during the Second World War was not just against Japanese-Americans--German-Americans, to the tune of eleven thousand, were interned at American camps all over the country, and unlike the Japanese, the United States government has not apologized to them or paid any form of reparations to them.
The irony here, of course, is that the United States did all of this as it entered war against Nazi Germany, a regime which obviously and famously caused the death of millions of innocent members of races that they deemed "inferior."
The important thing to note, however, is that things have truly gotten better in this country in terms of racial progress and changed mentalities. Following the conclusion of the war, and following the development of several decades' worth of progress, attitudes towards members of different races started to change. One cannot describe in succinct words the amount of legislation that has been passed to truly ensure equality in the United States and to work to stamp out racism altogether. Today, unlike prior to the start of World War II, membership in the Ku Klux Klan and other racist, deplorable organizations is considered shameful, not worthy of praise or admiration. And there is legal protection for minorities and groups that have been historically been discriminated against--in other words, if the United States government did today what it did in World War II, people would have significant legal recourse against it.
Mr. Hoekstra's hopes rest on the belief that Americans still have carnal feelings of distrust and hatred towards people of other races, that people from a particular country--or descended from people from a particular country--are proxies of that countryâs government. Mr. Hoekstra hopes, just as Mr. Amodei did last year in Nevada, that Americans are that elementary in nature. Call me a radical, but I don't think that they are. Recent polling done in the aftermath of the debacle proves that point fairly well enough.
Mr. Hoekstra, in other words, hopes that by instilling fear of China and Chinese people in Americans, he can gain their trust and can swoop into office as a kind of Great White Knight. By having a harmless-looking, pretty Chinese woman thank Senator "Spend-it-Now" (or Stabenow, as the adults in the room might say) for spending so much, in broken English, he hopes to drive home the point that the United States borrows too much from China to continue operating. (He forgets, of course, that China owns less than a fourteenth of our current national debt, but that's for another day.)
I had hoped that Mr. Hoekstra, who immigrated from The Netherlands at a young age, would have not stooped down to the level of such prejudice and racism. After all, being an immigrant from another country, even one with such a similar culture, has its difficulties, and I would imagine that little Pete probably experienced some teasing from bullies at recess over his parentsâ accents and place of origin.
However, I say, with disappointment poisoning my words, that Mr. Hoekstra epitomizes the transition that occurs when one goes from the bullied to the bully.