What level of comtenpt should be leveled at the actor in the racist Hoekstra ad?

[snagglepuss]

27. Kenton Ngo's Daily Kos comment which prompted the OP clearly sums up why it's os offensive.

I'm a native-born Chinese American. Odious scumbags like Rep. Pete Hoekstra and his daft team make my blood boil hotter than lava.

snip

This ad is the most visible and obvious example of a dangerous trend that Republicans and even some Democrats have embraced in recent cycles: casting Chinese people and culture as the Other to be feared.

Remember Jesse Helms' infamous Black Hands ad? It was enough to use the simple imagery of a pair of white hands to intone darkly that African-Americans were taking the jobs of Whites. With China-bashing, they don't even have to try for such subtlety.

This ad is a symptom of two threads of thought weaving themselves into a crazy quilt of racist imagery:

1) Chinese stereotypes, culture, and language as a shortcut for the Chinese economy and government -With only 30 seconds in an ad, it's much easier to preach fear of Chinese faces and culture than the Communist government, or economic forces. Hence the conical hats, rice paddies, gongs, and dragon dances.

2) Chinese faces as the Other, separate and apart from "American" faces - These ads always show happy Chinese faces taking jobs away from Americans, exploiting hidden a hidden sentiment that Chinese-Americans and other immigrant groups are simply not accepted as standard. That's why Senator George Allen tried to point out a native-born "macaca" as a foreigner in 2006: it's easy to keep castigating groups into permanent outsider status.




http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/06/1062342/-Hoekstras-Yellow-Hands:-A-Brief-History-of-anti-Chinese-Racist-Campaign-Ads