"Gook" Slur Revisited, Raising Questions about McCain Temperament

Specter of forgotten 2000 campaign controversy finds new focus in books, columns and blogs throughout Web 2.0

By Stewart David Ikeda, IMDiversity.com Asian-American Village

Note: This is the third in a series of postings focused on the positions and impact of Asian Americans during the 2008 national elections. For more, see the links at the end of the article.

October 1, 2008 - Into an election season already fraught with racial and gender tension, author Irwin Tang has introduced an accessible account and analysis of a largely forgotten incident from John McCain's failed 2000 presidential primary effort. The controversy surrounded the then-media darling's habitual and casual use of the slur "gook" before national reporters covering his "Straight Talk Express" tour.  This went long unreported until reaching a pitch that finally raised too many questions for some, including Katie Hong, who explored it in an opinion piece, "John McCain's racist remark very troubling," for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

On his campaign bus recently, Sen. John McCain told reporters, "I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." Although McCain said he was referring only to his prison guards, there are many reasons why his use of the word "gook" is offensive and alarming.

Picking up on the story eight years later, Tang's Gook: John McCain's Racism & Why It Matters recalls and highlights what was a small political blip at best for most non-Asians, who may not see why it's "all that big a deal" anyway.  Although its revelations may not exactly come as a shock to Asian Americans, the book offers context to the uninitiated by illustrating how the slur has been applied to diverse Asians (as well as Haitians) historically.  Tang goes further to show how it is used as a term of war to dehumanize usually racialized "others," and argues that that psychology is related to McCain's current presidential bid.

Although it is unlikely that McCain's fondness for "gook" will be an election flashpoint along the lines of the "macaca" incident that brought down ex-Virginia senator George Allen in the midterms, Tang does argue that the incident is similarly indicative of patterns of behavior that are relevant to this year's election.  In an author's video posted on YouTube, Tang observes that McCain's response to the protest provides revealing insights into the candidate's temperament and political judgment.

Regardless of their true inner feelings and wartime experiences, Tang notes, "Most veterans, when they come back to the States, [don't] use the word 'gook' in public, much less in the mass media, [knowing] that it's a racist term." 

But McCain's unabashed use of the term on the campaign trail, Tang suggests, indicates a "mentality" that shows McCain is "willing to dehumanize people of color -- especially foreign peoples of color -- in order to prepare them for American invasion."  Tang provides as examples recent high-profile, cavalier statements by McCain on how to "kill" Iranians, including his widely publicized jingle "Bomb Iran," set to the tune of the Beach Boys' tune "Barbara Ann".

As for why the controversy is largely forgotten now, Tang also observes an insidious double-standard applied to Asians as a small, easy political target relative to other minority groups.  "If he had used the 'N-word' to describe anyone," Tang argues, "[we] would have disqualified John McCain for the presidency immediately."

Small Ripples

One reason, certainly, that the "gook" incident made less of a ripple than it might have, is a willful blindness among the press corps covering McCain's campaign. Whether out of deference to McCain's harrowing wartime experience, or because it just didn't seem a big enough story in itself for mainstream news outlets, the reporters "gave McCain a pass" for much of the campaign. As Jeff Cohen, writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Media, later observed, McCain held special sway with journalists on the Straight Talk bus. In a critique of the (lack of) coverage, he wrote:

Imagine that in a roomful of journalists, Bush or Al Gore had told a joke about the ugliness of the teenage daughter of a political rival. Or had used a racial slur. You'd expect loud, negative news coverage. But if the candidate is McCain and the room is his "Straight Talk Express" campaign bus, you get not a bang, but a whimper from reporters.

In those pre-9/11 days before the notion of journalistic "embedding" became popularized, the crew covering the charismatic McCain's tour "sometimes seem[ed] more like campaign aides than reporters," Cohen remarked.  They also occasionally tried to save the candidate from himself:

When he belittled the [teenage daughter of a political rival], according to U.S. News and World Report, "[a] reporter just begged McCain to shut up and protect himself."

Another reason for the modest impact of the incident was the tentativeness of the greatest stakeholders -- Vietnamese and Filipino American voters who have been most famously targeted by the slur -- in criticizing a GOP candidate.  Ironically, some of McCain's more vociferous defenders in 2000 were Vietnamese-American Republicans, who have traditionally been attracted to the Party's proclaimed anti-Communist stance and admiring of McCain's war record in particular.  Running interference for the Senator in 2000, some prominent figures in the community helped the campaign to downplay the gaffe, aiding efforts to divorce the slur from its racial implications, accepting the explanation that McCain intended it to refer exclusively to his former captors, without consideration of any further ethnic  connotations.

The action was effective at nipping the controversy in the bud.  Although several national Asian American organizations had stood to protest the incident, and attempted to present an image of pan-ethnic solidarity, the movement had no teeth.  While a number of community figures -- including many ethnic Japanese and Chinese Americans -- called for a McCain apology, if not withdrawal from the race, their protests seemed like so much misplaced "P.C." to outside eyes unfamiliar with term's history and application to multiple, mostly Asian ethnic groups.  If "the gooks" aren't offended by the term "gook," went this warped rationale, why should the "Japs," et al get all bent out of shape?

In his eventual apology, which most Asian Americans took as less than "straight-talking," McCain said that "out of respect to a great number of people for whom I hold in very high regard," he would discontinue using the term "that has caused such discomfort."  Elaborating, campaign spokesperson, Dan Schnur, took care to further specify that McCain's "language in no way represents his feelings toward the people in Vietnam or the Vietnamese American community,” the Senator's most stalwart supporters among Asian Americans.

As Tang observes, however, the slur was targeted during various eras to Asians and Pacific Islanders of diverse origins including Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans and Chinese, before its use in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.  More to the contemporary point, he notes, virtually every American of East and Southeast Asian ancestry has experienced how readily "gook" serves as a catchall slur for Asians -- "all looking alike, anyway" -- often preceding an assault. It was, for just one example, among the provocations cited by the defense in fatal clashes between white supremacists and Asian American teens in the tragic, widely publicized racial tensions taking place in the Washington's Ocean Shores sea-resort area in 2000.

The Political is Personal

The experience of being "gooked" is recalled in a straightforward and moving personal video, John McCain Hates Me by Kevin Cassinova, that is now circulating on the Internet.  With no book to sell and representing no particular political organization, Cassinova narrates his video in a tone far different from the majority in the growing archive of similarly themed videos online.  While most YouTube videos of this ilk primarily attempt to document a pattern of racist positions in McCain's past, and thus discounted by his supporters as attempts to "play the race card," Cassinova's simple, webcam essay begins on a deeply respectful note. Expressing admiration for McCain's military service and empathy for his wartime imprisonment, Cassinova then goes on to recount in very personal terms the experience of racial hostility that average Asian Americans routinely face, and thus to illustrate the day-to-day effects of the kind of "dehumanization" that Tang's more scholarly approach theorizes. 

While Tang makes an important, well-documented statement about race-baiting and anti-Asian sentiment in political elections for non-Asian audiences, it's the Cassinova video that may hit home most powerfully for Asian Americans. It's no surprise to us that politicians of all parties have always been able to score cheap points by stereotyping, demonizing and bashing Asians. But by articulating our deeper inner feelings about the experience of racism -- and the misgivings these inspire in us about the values and leadership potential of candidates, and the apparent punching-bag status we hold in our society, even if we're too insecure to raise them publicly -- Cassinova's video gives voice to the unease about McCain that many of us harbored, unexpressed, since 2000.  And, it may do so more effectively than other attempts to shout "John McCain's a racist!" from the rooftops.

Because finally, "playing the race card" by merely proclaiming a candidate to be "racist" almost never works as a political strategy. Mere thought-policing never works. After all, our history is littered with leaders who owned slaves, slaughtered natives, excluded Asians and interned Japanese. If merely having racist sentiments was decisive in elections, the United States would hardly have elected anyone.

Why it matters is the relevant question in Tang's book. It matters for what it reveals about the temperament and temper, the diplomatic tact and sensitivity to the electorate of a candidate that is celebrated for "shooting from the hip," for straight talk that "calls a spade a spade."

The concern is not that "John McCain hates me".  It's whether he can overcome the demons from the past that haunt him, and demonstrate the self-control, the judgment, to fairly represent and wisely lead all of us as we enter a terribly unstable future.

Other Readings of Interest

• Series Part 1: Unprecedented AAPI Presence at Democratic Convention
  Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders prominent in Denver, from floor to podium

• Series Part 2: The GOP's "Asian" Problem
  Once considered "natural Republicans," Asian Americans are being push ever-further to the Party margins

• Book Review: Gook: John McCain's Racism and Why It Matters
  African-American critic Kam Williams finds "a moving must-read" in courageous new book by Irwin Tang, a "true American patriot"

• Secret Asian Man: Sooner or Later, It Happens to All of Us
  Comic Strip by Tak Toyoshima, Village Artist-in-Residence

• Politics & Law Readings Archives at IMDiversity.com Asian-American Village