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California GOP Rep. Michelle Steel called out the former Anaheim Democratic Club Vice President for calling her “unintelligible” due to her accent, stating he was attempting to “re-up racist” tropes.
California Republican Rep. Michelle Steel called out former Anaheim Democratic Club Vice President Vernon Nelson for attempting to “re-up racist” tropes, by calling Steel “unintelligible” due to her accent.
Steel called out Nelson’s alleged “racist comment” in a recent blog post on the Orange Juice Blog. In an interview with congressional candidate Derek Tran, Nelson said Steel’s accent as “unintelligible,” comparing her “intelligence” to Tran’s.
“And when I was an undergrad I minored in law. I don’t know why, I just loved the law. And I asked a professor, whom I looked up to, how could I go about getting into law school, and he told me he didn’t think I could do it. ‘Your English isn’t good enough,’ he said. THAT really discouraged me for a while, messed with my self-esteem,” Tran reportedly stated, according to Vernon.
“Funny, Derek’s English is perfect now. Very articulate and doesn’t even retain an accent. (Compare to Michelle Steel, unintelligible after 50 years in America, an intelligence thing I guess, but I digress…),” Vernon continued to add.
While Steel took to social media to blast her press statement, the representative’s campaign spokesperson, Lance Trover, addressed the trope as a “racist dog whistle.” Trover highlighted that Democrats previously attempted last cycle to attack Steel’s accent, calling out her winning lead regardless of the comments.
“California Democrats, led by Derek Tran endorser Jay Chen, tried this racist trope last cycle and voters responded by re-electing Michelle Steel by 5 points in a Democratic-leaning district,” Trover stated. “Cheyenne Hunt, Kim Nguyen, Aditya Pai, and Derek Tran should repudiate these racist dog whistles.”
During the last election cycle in 2022, congressional candidate Jay Chen was called out by 23 community leaders demanding that he apologize to Steel after comments he made regarding her accent. Chen had received backlash after speaking at a meet and greet event in Fountain Valley, California, according to Fox News.
"Yeah, so she just had another town hall the other day. And, umm, it's tough. Like, we’ve transcribed it," Chen previously stated.
I guess nobody reads this blog. At least nobody comments. All for the best.
LOL imagine how these Republicans laugh amongst themselves when they use woke phrases like "racist tropes" .. at the same time as they're sending yellow-tinted attack ads against Dave Min. I'm glad they quoted my entire context here. It's clear that I was saying the difference between Derek Tran's and Michelle Steel's intelligibility is their respective intelligence, and effort - Derek went in ten years from his English being so bad that his professor thought he couldn't make it in law school to being a "rising star" in legal circles, while Michelle is unintelligible after 50 years in America - even, as Jay Chen observed, "if you had a transcript and read her actual words." Also it's clear that Derek…