[ad_1]
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was criticized on Wednesday for comments he made about U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, a Korean U.S. candidate for an appeals court judge, in which he described stereotypes about Korean people.
Grassley made the statements during a Judicial Committee hearing on Koh’s appointment to the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals. He said Koh, who shared stories about his legacy and his mother’s escape from North Korea during the proceedings, reminded him of something that his stepdaughter, who is also of Korean descent, had told him about the Korean people.
“What you said about your Korean origins reminds me a lot of what my 45 year old daughter-in-law said: ‘If I learn anything from Koreans, it’s a hard work ethic and how you can do it a lot with nothing, “” he said before congratulating Koh, a US District Judge in Northern California, on “you and your people.”
The comments sparked backlash from many social media outlets who accused Grassley of invoking the stereotype of the model minority.
Taylor Foy, Grassley’s communications director, said Grassley’s comments were intended to be “free, not to insult anyone.”
Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., “Invited Judge Koh to share his family’s inspiring story of immigration to the United States,” Foy wrote. “Senator Grassley said he was also inspired by the immigration story of his daughter-in-law, who is also Korean-American.”
Koh did not respond to a request for comment.
Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of policy and civic engagement at the nonprofit National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said comments like Grassley’s were “dangerous” given the damage done by the stereotype of the model minority to mask the struggles and challenges of the community.
“It is not a compliment to say that Koreans can do something out of nothing. We do not survive or make a living to be validated or praised by people like Senator Grassley, ”she said.
During the proceedings, Koh, who would go down in history as the first Korean American woman to sit as a federal appellate judge if upheld, spoke about her immigrant family, calling her mother the l one of his “heroes”. She told the committee that her mother, who was present, was around 10 years old when she fled North Korea for South Korea in 1946, when such an act was prohibited.
“She and her uncles practically escaped. It was illegal to leave North Korea, ”she said. “This 38th parallel had been drawn in August the year before, but it was porous, it was not applied, so she and her uncles – she was about 10 years old at the time – walked for two weeks to come. … South Korea.”
Koh also shared a bit of his own experiences growing up in Mississippi, attending highly segregated elementary schools.
Koh briefly thanked Grassley for his comment before the hearing began.
Choimorrow said that instead of invoking stereotypes, Grassley should have listened to and acknowledged the sacrifices made by Koh’s family.
“What he should have said instead was, ‘No one should have to suffer and struggle so hard to survive. I am very sorry for the way our country has disrupted the lives of Koreans to force families like yours to struggle, ”she said.
[ad_2]
Source link