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Book Review: "Gook": John McCain’s Racism and Why It Matters
By Kam Williams
“’I hate the gooks,’ said John McCain in the year 2000. ‘I will hate them as long as
I live.’ It reveals something when a senator calls people ‘gooks’ and volunteers it for
mass media broadcast… The fact that Mr. McCain carries such everlasting hate within him
– that says something too.
My mother does not want me to publish this book. I know exactly what she meant even
though she did not say it. My mother simply wants no trouble, no heartache, for me or my
family.
I grew up in East Texas and my parents still live there… the Ku Klux Klan is still
very active there. Black people still get ‘nigger’ yelled at them. I got spit on for
being Asian… growing up. I was called ‘gook’ every so often. Other times it was ‘Jap’ or
‘Chink’ or some other racial epithet. [And] the name-calling was never as bad as the
violence.
Have you ever been an object before? It is difficult to describe my own personal
experience as a ‘gook’ in America… What I am doing here is not an attack. It is a public
service for my nation. If you’ve ever been called a ‘gook,’ you know this in your
heart.”
-- Excerpted from the Introduction
While on the presidential campaign trail in February of 2000, John McCain was confronted
by the press about his use of an ethnic slur against Asians. Instead of apologizing, the
notoriously short-tempered Senator from Arizona arrogantly went on the offensive, asserting
that he would always hate “gooks.”
It is now eight years later, and the country is facing the possibility that this
inveterate racist might actually win the White House on Election Day. For this reason, Irwin
A. Tang decided to publish Gook: John McCain’s Racism and Why It Matters. Tang, also
the author of How I Became a Black Man, is an outspoken anomaly among
Asian-Americans, a group dubbed the “model minority” because of their deference in the face
of discrimination based on their skin color.
This timely tome makes a powerfully persuasive case against celebrated POW and presumed
patriot McCain in several ways. First, Tang talks about the psychic and sometimes physical
wounds he and other Asian Americans have silently endured at the
hands of bigots on account of prejudice. Then, he shows how McCain has courted the support
of numerous white supremacist organizations over the course of his checkered political
career. Most importantly, he then shows why this warmonger cannot be trusted to set the tone
for tolerance either domestically or in terms of international affairs, given his history of
dehumanizing ethnic and religious groups he doesn’t care for.
The eye-opening book’s basic question is this: Have we as a country really become so
desensitized to hate speech that we’re willing to elect someone President who so openly
stereotypes and acknowledges his dislike of a large segment of the society he is supposed to
govern? After reading this heartfelt memoir/impassioned polemic, I say Irwin Tang, not John
McCain, is the true American patriot. For, at considerable risk to his own personal safety,
the author of this shocking expose’ has revealed the Republican presidential nominee as
little more than an incendiary race-baiter more reminiscent of a Jim Crow-era segregationist
than a straight-talking maverick.
A moving must-read for any voters still undecided about who they’re going to support in
November.
Publication Information
Gook: John McCain's Racism & Why It Matters
by Irwin A. Tang
Paul Revere Books
Paperback, $14.90
186 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9670433-4-3
To order a copy of the book, visit: http://www.irwinbooks.com/?page_id=4
To see a video of the author discussing Gook, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6iqLcidbhg
Other Recent Readings of Interest
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Lloyd Kam Williams
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMD.
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