CNN) – Longtime Alaska Rep. Don Young, 79, attempted to clarify Thursday his use of the derogatory term "wetbacks" to describe immigrant workers in an interview earlier this week. "I used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in Central California," the Republican congressman said in a statement issued to a local television station in Anchorage. "I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect." "My father had a ranch; we used to have
50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes," Young said. "
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/29/alaska-congressman-walks-back-wetbacks/?hpt=hp_t2
I wonder if his father had owned a cotton field in the south would he have said " My father had a field; we used to have 50 -60 niggers pick cotton."
Old racist bastards like this have no business being elected officials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback
read em and weep. in the US in the 50's the term was even used in the New York Times, and official publications from the US government.
even by democrats.
"Eisenhower quoted a report in The New York Times that said, "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government"
but your narrative is that republicans are evil, conservatives are evil, and old people are always racist, if not in their words, certainly in their hearts. unless they are properly "Progressive" then they are innocent of all their past sins and misdeeds, reborn in a baptism of leftist ideology, and washed clean by the waters of thinly veiled disdain for anyone with a differing opinion on any issue no matter how trivial.
the motherfucker is 80 years old, he's gonna say shit that seems racist to your post-modern sensibilities, and delicate emotional state.
be butthurt about this guy if you like, but blaming his entire party for one offhand remark you find offensive is just pathetic.
fuck, your entire country is homophobic and hateful, since you dont even react when assholes on your TV programs and radio broadcasts talk about "Smoking Fags", which is unconscionable! Inciting violence against anyone, much less calling for the murder of people based solely on sexual preference is HORRIFYING!!
Britain has become barely better than the Taliban!!