‘Whites and Asians need not apply’: Election mailers show fake hiring ad
Election mailers distributed by the nonprofit organization America First Legal Foundation are using a mock hiring ad to claim racial discrimination against Asians.
The election mailers feature claims related to alleged racial discrimination against white and Asian Americans, and were sent out in North Carolina, Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, according to Indy Week.
The fake hiring ad’s “requirements” say applicants “must be Black or Latinx” and “whites and Asians need not apply.”
Another mailer claims that “Biden And Left-Wing Radicals are engaged in widespread racial discrimination against whites and Asian Americans…even though it’s against the law.”
A third mailer notes: “Biden And The Left Want To Decide Who Gets Hired, And Who Gets Fired According To Their Skin Color. Even Pilots Will Be Chosen Based On Skin Color, Not Flying Ability.”
“It’s not something you expect to find in your mailbox,” Su Cho, an Asian American voter in Cary, North Carolina, told WRAL. “It was shocking to see that and the language, of course. I recognized in that moment — this is misinformation, disinformation and a very hateful form of disinformation.”
Voter rights advocacy group North Carolina Asian Americans Together (NCAAT) said that the America First Legal Foundation, which is an organization founded by Donald Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, targeted Asian American voters across North Carolina with “hateful, racist mailers aimed at suppressing their vote and subduing the political power of the fastest-growing racial demographic in the state.”
“Miller has a long history of peddling racist hate and division against the vulnerable and underrepresented,” Chavi Khanna Koneru, the executive director of NCAAT and NCAAT in Action, stated in a press release. “This blatant piece of disinformation is the first time Asian Americans in North Carolina have been the target of suppression efforts around an election.”
Late last month, the nonprofit conservative group Citizens for Sanity, whose board of directors includes at least three individuals who are heavily involved with AFLF, released an advertisement to Twitter directly blaming Biden for anti-Asian hate.
According to Koneru, the attempt to reduce voter turnout is in response to the U.S. Census data that reportedly shows “exponential growth” in the nation’s Asian American population. Out of more than 1.4 million early voters, 15,550 of them identify as Asian, as of Tuesday.
Koneru believes that the mailers show that the U.S.’s bad political actors fear the growing political power of Asian Americans. According to her, the mailers “repurposes an old tactic historically used to drive a wedge between Asians and other racial communities of color in the United States.”
However, Koneru noted that 50 percent of Asian Americans are more motivated to vote in this year’s election as compared to previous elections based on a NCAAT poll.
“We have the ability to decide the outcomes of elections, and I think that can make some people nervous,” Koneru said.
“Asian Americans have stood resilient against attempts to suppress and silence us, and our community will come together to make our voices heard at the polls,” she added.
Featured Image via WRAL
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