Salon: SC Senator Jake Knotts, "Raghead," and the nature of GOP racism

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Friday, Jun 4, 2010 08:05 ET

War Room

Jake Knotts, "Raghead," and the nature of GOP racism

By Gabriel Winant

http://www.salon.com/news/race/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/06/04/knotts_raghead_racism



You know the pattern. Since the 2008 campaign, every few weeks or months some minor political figure in the GOP utters something scandalously racist about the president. The Republican Party distances itself from the comments. Democrats mutter to about how the conservative movement is riddled with troglodytes. Nobody gets anywhere.

Yesterday, as Alex Pareene noted, South Carolina Republican state Sen. Jake Knotts gave us an unusually frank rendition. Of his party’s front-running gubernatorial candidate, state Rep. Nikki Haley, Knotts said, "We already got one raghead in the White House, we don't need a raghead in the governor’s mansion." Haley immigrated to the United States as a child from India. She is a convert to Methodism, from Sikhism.

Sikhs are, of course, not Muslims. Hailing from what is now the border area between Pakistan and India, Sikhism bears some similarities to Islam and Hinduism both, but is not a sect of either. To lump it in with Islam makes about as much sense as an insult as calling a Christian a kike. Same geographical origin, very rough theological similarities -- close enough, right?

Anyway, despite the crude literalism of the slur -- like many Muslims, orthodox Sikh men wear turbans -- it's fairly clear from the thrust of the insult that Knotts thought he was just calling Haley a sand nigger. (Like the president!) So here we have our troglodyte.

Cue damage control. The state Republican chair, Karen Floyd, issued a statement condemning Knotts. And if it sounds a bit halfhearted, well, this is how these things always sound. "The South Carolina Republican Party strongly condemns any use of racial or religious slurs. Senator Knotts should apologize for his inappropriate comments, so that we can put this unfortunate incident behind us and focus on issues important to moving our state forward."

[Submariner]

1. Another fat white racist Cracker

they all want to be racist scum like Rush Limbaugh.

[NoQuarter]

2. You for fugly

in that list of adjectives.