It's borderline prejudiced in a "where are you really from?" kind of way, which is what people of colour and even non Anglo-Saxon white people get asked a lot in America and Britain.
I don't think it's racist to assume her family are Thai if she is a somewhat East Asian-looking woman who was born in Thailand. That's an easy mistake to make, it's the same as people hearing my surname and assuming I'm Italian, or looking at how some of my family members look and assuming they're Arabs or Turkish. If you line up a group of white people and ask "which is French, which is Italian, which is Croatian?" most people will get it wrong too.
I'm more stunned by the "George Washington" bit, ffs and this is a man in politics? I weep.
I don't think it's racist to assume her family are Thai if she is a somewhat East Asian-looking woman who was born in Thailand. That's an easy mistake to make, it's the same as people hearing my surname and assuming I'm Italian, or looking at how some of my family members look and assuming they're Arabs or Turkish. If you line up a group of white people and ask "which is French, which is Italian, which is Croatian?" most people will get it wrong too.
I'm more stunned by the "George Washington" bit, ffs and this is a man in politics? I weep.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
