During a Republican National Committee candidate forum on March 10 at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon, Faye Stewart used false and racist stereotypes of Vietnamese immigrants eating dogs and cats to argue against taking in Syrian refugees.
Stewart said, “[W]e took in some refugees, I believe it was some Vietnamese refugees into this state years ago and it created a huge problem because their culture and their lifestyle didn’t mix with ours.”
“And when I say that, you know our government housed them in buildings in the Portland area, my understanding and what ended up happening was is [sic] they didn’t know how to heat their homes. What did they do? They started a fire in the middle of their living room in an apartment complex,” said Stewart.
He further added, “or when they needed something to eat, they went to their natural ways of doing it by harvesting people’s dogs and cats, their pets.”
“And so what we need to do is we need to make sure that when we do help people we do it appropriately. I question why can’t we go over there and help them in their native land and protect them there. Why do we need to bring them here and potentially jeopardize the citizens lives here. If we do bring them here, then we need to make sure that we do it appropriately so that it doesn’t negatively impact. We have people today that want to kill us because of who we are and we need to make sure that we don’t jeopardize the citizens in the process.”
Watch the video footage in the Dailycaller.com article.
Accusing Vietnamese refugees of starting a fire in their own homes to warm themselves and going out to hunt neighbors’ dogs and cats is outrageous. Were they cavemen or what? This is again a prime example of how Republicans use racist stereotypes and myths to instill fear in the heart of average Americans and manipulate them to support their anti-immigrant and anti-democratic policies.
As a person of color in America, how can one vote Republicans who are ideologically against your daily existence?
