Indian American politicians have denounced a television advertisement by a conservative group called Americans for Job Security that hits at a governor who had earlier favoured outsourcing jobs to India.
The Americans for Job Security has dredged up familiar stereotypes from the outsourcing debate from past presidential campaigns where India was the whipping boy.
Also, in the process of denouncing the ad, Indian-American activists of Democrat and Republican parties have taken pot shots at each other.
The advertisement in question, which targets Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, who is running in the Arkansas Democratic primary against incumbent US Senator Blanche Lincoln shows supposed residents of Bangalore in Indian clothes and heavy accents, with a clear imagery depicting India in the background, thanking Halter for outsourcing American jobs to India.
The rationale for targeting Halter is apparently because he had once served on a corporate board that voted to outsource a percentage of jobs to India.
However, AJS president Stephen DeMaura, was unapologetic saying that no one should be surprised at their criticising a specific case of outsourcing.
"We think that if American companies have opportunities to create jobs in America, then they should," he said, adding, "Our name is 'Americans' for job security. To argue that this is not inside our wheelhouse is sort of silly."
AJS is classified as a 501(c) 6 organisation, which is of similar status as labor unions, and sources told rediff.com that it was a spin off from The Coalition: Americans Working for Real Change, a project of the US Chamber of Commerce, which interestingly is strongly in favor of outsourcing.
AJS do not publish a list of their members.
Former Clinton and Obama administration official Neera Tanden, who is now the chief operating officer of the Center for American Progress, writing in CAP's flagship publication The New Republic, slammed the ad as 'racist.'
"Americans for Job Security is a corporate front group", which has "spent millions on behalf of campaigns to repeal the estate tax and take down the Employee Free Choice Act", and that it's ad attacking Halter "that can't help but be described as racist."
Tanden noted that "it features Indian actors -- in Indian outfits, with Indian accents, with images of India behind them. They thank Halter for his support of outsourcing to Bangalore while he served as the director of an unnamed company".
"The poorly produced ad, which somehow cost American for Job Security $900,000, trades in crude cultural clichés and carries the clear implicit message: Don't vote for that politician who does business with the funny-sounding Indians," Tanden wrote.
She bemoaned that "our society strangely tolerating mocking Indians".
"There are never, for instance, ads attacking outsourcing to Ireland with Irish actors, even though that country has made a major push to become an outsourcing hub. Or imagine an ad featuring Hassidic Jews and klezmer music and the outrage that would generate. Yet similar treatment of Indians seems to be perfectly acceptable in many quarters," she said.
But Tanden also took the chance to take a dig at Louisiana Governor and Republican Bobby Jindal.
"And what the hell does bobby Jindal, the most prominent Indian American politician think about this? I suppose business groups would never target him. But he won't have much of a moral leg to stand on, when in a Republican primary, some shady group runs a similarly racist ad against him," she said.
The Indian American Conservative Council, an appendage of the Indian American Republican Council, also blasted the ad with its chairman Dino Teppara, saying, "We have consistently spoken out against the use of outsourcing and India in election years and condemn the back-and-forth campaign ads between the Halter and Lincoln camps in Arkansas."
"The ads are inflammatory and inaccurate and should be pulled," he said.
But Teppara said Lincoln "sent a mailer paid for by her campaign against her Democratic primary opponent alleging that 'Bill Halter's Company Sent American Jobs to India', though he just sat on the board of directors of a company that opened an office in Bengaluru.
A picture of the Taj Mahal is prominently included in the mail piece with repeated allegations of American jobs lost due to outsourcing to India, he said.
Teppara said, "It is astounding and hypocritical that Blanche Lincoln condemned this TV ad and then immediately sent out a mail piece with essentially the same message."
"It is slap in the face to the Indian American community that these labor-backed smear campaigns against India and the Indian American community continue to be part of leftwing campaign strategies."
"Liberals ran similar ads in Louisiana against former Congressman and now Governor Bobby Jindal in 2003," Teppara claimed.
Parag Mehta, who was the seniormost staffer at the Democratic National Committee, before he went on to work on the Obama campaign and the Obama-Biden transition team, said, "I'm not sure what bothers me more: the stereotypes of Indians or the fact that they were lazy enough to use background music that isn't so much Indian as it is from the soundtrack of the HBO series 'Rome'."
But he said, "On a serious note, with all the anti-immigrant fervor in the wake of Arizona's new (immigration) law, I think it's important that we keep an eye on this sort of rhetoric. After all, it was during another economic downturn in 1981 when Chinese American Vincent Chin was murdered by unemployed auto workers because they flet the Japanese were buying out America."
"Note the thread of cultural ignorance and general stupidity that runs through this episode," Mehta said.
He said as far as he was aware, AJS made a $400 ad buy in Little Rock and $150 buy in Fort Smith, and predicted, "History shows they will likely ramp up their attacks as the cycle progresses much like they did against Jean Shaheen in her 2002 and 2008 U Senate campaigns."
The US-India Political Action Committee, also denounced the AJS's "offensive and divisive political advertisement" and said it "demeans Americans of Indian descent and misrepresent global commerce that is vital for American jobs and prosperity".
It urged the AJS "as well as supporters of Senator Lincoln to halt this negative and hateful message immediately."
Sanjay Puri, chairman of USINPAC said, "These are tough economic times, which has resulted in a heated and contentious political debate. But as President Obama has stated several times, words do matter. We do hope the Senate aspirants of his party pay heed to this message."
Kersy Dastur, senior adviser to USINPAC and co-author of US National Security and US-India Strategic Relations, said, "The ugly caricature of Indians in the ad is an insult to all Indians, and comes at a delicate time when it is in our interest in the USA to forge strong bonds with India to thwart threats to our national security from Asia."
James Rucker, executive director of the liberal watchdog group Color of Change, said, "It's race-baiting without question."
Rucker also couldn't understand why a business-funded AJS, would castigate with such venom a common business practice, saying, "This messaging does not fit in line with pro-business perspective, from what I can tell."
